Colloque - Discourse Files - Josef Perner : The Vanished Jar: Children's Problems with Non-Verbal Identity Information

Épisode de Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit - François Recanati par Collège de France · 31 mars 2026 · 1 h 16 min

François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2024-2025

Colloque - Discourse Files

The Vanished Jar: Children's Problems with Non-Verbal Identity Information

Gergely Csibra

Central European University, Vienne

Résumé

Résumé

Children become able to process verbal identity statements as they learn to attribute false beliefs. The mental files explanation points to the need for linked indexed files for solving both tasks, which children achieve around 3 to 5 years. Clearly, an indexed file is needed for attributing belief; but an identity statement could just result in merging two regular files. I argue that indexed files are necessary for understanding the statement. This opens the possibility that children might cope with non-verbal, perceptual identity information well before they pass false belief tests. In our study, children had to figure out which jar is identical with a jar that had vanished. The results dampen any expectations of earlier competence. Without the help of an identity statement children operate exclusively with regular files, which are subject to Strawson's Constraint (only one file per object). Consequently, children displayed strong mutual exclusivity. They could not get themselves to identify the vanished jar with the (for us) obvious candidate, which was already tracked by another file. In sum, deployment of indexed files is associated with language use. This is also reflected in the strong dependence of passing false belief tests on language development.

Josef Perner

Josef Perner received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Toronto. He was Professor in Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex and is now Professor emeritus of Psychology and member of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Salzburg.

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