Rule understanding, subjective perspectives, and social display rules

This project investigates the development of rule understanding (arbitrary task-rules as well as common social display rules) in relation to children`s understanding of subjective perspectives and their executive control abilities. The main research questions of the project are: (1) What can "Levels of consciousness (LOC) models" tell us about the development of rule understanding? (2) How does children`s use and knowledge of social display rules develop? (3) Are children with autism aware of social display rules and are they able to use such emotional display rules? An important milestone in the development of rule understanding occurs at about 4 years of age, when children begin to understand conflicting rules. For example, in the Dimensional Change Card Sorting task, children are asked to sort a series of mismatching test cards, first according to one dimension (e.g., color) and then according to another, conflicting dimension (e.g., form). Children master this task at about 4 years of age and correctly switch to the other dimension, when asked to do so. According to the "Levels of consciousness" account, younger children have problems in this sorting task, because they are not able to reflect on their representations of the two contradicting rule pairs and thus fail to integrate them into a single hierarchical system of rules. Interestingly, children`s ability to switch to a conflicting rule pair is strongly related to performance on the false belief task, which is thought to indicate the establishing of a full fledged subjective perspective. In an interdisciplinary endeavor, bringing together philosophical considerations and findings from empirical research, this project aims at answering the question what it exactly means to reflect on conflicting rules and why this ability is related to an understanding of subjective perspectives in general. For children`s everyday interactions, other, non-arbitrary rules, for example, social display rules, are important. Display rules are important in social situations where an experienced emotion should be hidden, for example, when receiving a disappointing gift. This project investigates children`s ability to understand and to act according to social display rules in relation to theory of mind understanding and executive control abilities. The project also aims at investigating the use and knowledge of display rules in different cultures and in children with autism.

We developed a new theory (teleology) of how children come to appreciate the normative aspect of human actions and tested various predictions from the theory on large samples of children. To explain the different theories consider this very simple story: Max sees how his mother put his chocolate into a cupboard. After playing outside, he wants his chocolate. Where will he look for it? The currently dominant theory assumes that we arrive at an answer by applying a theory (theory-theory) about Maxs mind: He has seen where mother put his chocolate, so he knows where it is. He also knows that to get something one goes to where it is. Hence, when he wants his chocolate he will go to the cupboard. On this account, understanding people rests on lawful regularities in the same way as our understanding of physical events: If there is too much weight on the bridge it will collapse. But there is a difference. The bridge just will break by natural law but Max not only will go to the cupboard for his chocolate he also should go there (a normative element), for he has good reasons to go there if he wants his chocolate. Teleology brings this element back into our theories of action understanding: people dont act by some natural law, but do what they should do. We tested several predictions how children come to understand human actions based on teleology, where these predictions differ from those of the theory-theory. Teleology, following Aristotle, assumes that one has good reasons for action only if it leads to something positive (good). Only then should one act. Unfortunately, people often pursue ends that are bad for us and, therefore, should not be pursued. Typically, however, these people do pursue something positive from their point of view (perspective). The teleologist, thus, has to consider their point of view in order to understand how they will act. We know that this is difficult for children younger than about 4 years. We could show that young children have difficulty making competitive moves in games, and found commercial game companies not marketing competitive games for children younger than 4 or 5 years.We also looked at childrens much earlier protest when someone claims to play a particular game and then does something quite different. Does this protest show that children see the person violating a social norm of obeying a games rules? We concluded that their protest is directed at the violation of the practical norms of success: one has to perform the correct actions to successfully play the game. Our research was conducted in close exchange with the affiliated philosophy projects in our ESF project.