Children's memory for drawings based on a false belief.

Abstract

In 3 studies, preschool children drew or saw another person draw what they wrongly thought were the contents of a box, saw the true contents, and then were asked what had been drawn and what they (or the other person) had thought was in the box. Children were more accurate at recalling drawings than beliefs. Belief judgments were no more accurate than in a control task with no drawing. Both the drawings and the initial belief represented falsely the contents of the box, yet children had much more difficulty with beliefs than with drawings and did not use their more accurate recall of drawings to help recall beliefs. These results are contrary both to the view that children have a general representational deficit and to the view that having a physical counterpart to belief helps children overcome a reality bias.