Mele Taumoepeau, 'Ungatea Fonua Kata, 'Ana Heti Veikune, Susana Lotulelei, Peseti Tupou'ila Vea, 'Ilaisaane Fonua
This study examined the developmental profiles of children's social reasoning about individual agentive and deontic concerns. Tongan children (N = 140, 47.9% male), aged 4-8 years, were given a set of mentalistic (standard theory-of-mind) and deontic reasoning tasks. On average, children found diverse desires, knowledge access, hidden emotion, and belief emotion easier than the false-belief and diverse belief tasks. Tongan children were sensitive to social norms governing behavior, and this information was recruited for predicting behavior in a false-belief task when embedded in a socially normative context...
September 2022: Child Development