2026/06/15 by Leon Li, Sebastian Grueneisen, Juliette Chartier +1 · 1 voice
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Child Development and Digital Technology #Child and Animal Learning Development #Social Representations and Identity
paper · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2026.106568
openalex publication_date 2026/06/15 · openalex created_date 2026/06/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Much research has examined young children's (lack of) understanding of the subjectivity of beliefs, yet the other side of the issue has remained overlooked: Do young children understand the objectivity of reality? In this study, 83 children from 4 to 5 years of age completed: (i) the False Belief Task, which assessed children's understanding that a character's subjective beliefs may not correspond to an altered objective reality and (ii) a novel Objective Reality Task, which assessed children's understanding that the objective reality may not correspond to a character's altered subjective beliefs. Performances on the two tasks improved in similar trajectories from 4 to 5 years of age and were correlated, including when controlling for age, suggesting similar underlying developmental processes. These findings provide empirical support for the analytical supposition that subjectivity and objectivity are complementary forms of understanding.