Children's Reasoning and the Mind

Peter Mitchell, Kevin Riggs

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317715214
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This fresh and dynamic book offers a thorough investigation into the development of the cognitive processes that underpin judgements about mental states (often termed 'theory of mind') and addresses specific issues that have not been adequately dealt with in the past, and which are now being raised by some of the most prominent researchers in the field.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• 1 Making judgements about mental states: Processes and inferences
• 2 The grounding of symbols: A social–developmental account
• 3 A proposal for the development of a mental vocabulary, with special reference to pretence and false belief
• 4 Reasoning from false premises
• 5 Counterfactual thinking in pre-school children: Mental state and causal inferences
• 6 What is difficult about counterfactual reasoning?
• 7 Beyond really and truly: Children’s counterfactual thinking about pretend and possible worlds
• 8 Theory of mind, domain specificity, and reasoning
• 9 Self-reflection and the development of consciously controlled processing
• 10 Linguistic determination and the understanding of false beliefs
• 11 Attending to and learning about mental states
• 12 Children’s understanding of belief: Why is it important to understand what happened?
• 13 False beliefs about false beliefs
• 14 Belief as construction: Inference and processing bias
• 15 Theory of mind, metacognition, and reasoning: A life-span perspective
• 16 Causal reasoning and behaviour in children and adults in a technologically advanced society: Are we still prepared to believe in magic and animism?
• 17 Communication and representation: Why mentalistic reasoning is a lifelong endeavour
• 18 About + Belief + Counterfactual
• Author index
• Subject index