Puppet use is a popular research tool in developmental studies. Despite this popularity, however, the method has rarely received systematic discussion regarding its theoretical foundations. The ...present paper addresses a number of fundamental questions concerning puppets use in research, with the hope of contributing initial steps towards such a theoretical foundation. First, why use puppets at all? Here, cases where puppet use is convenient are distinguished from those where it is inevitable. Second, why should puppet use be a valid method to study real social cognition? The basic argument here will be that puppet use is not categorically different from using other symbolic props (pictures, narratives, movies) in most of psychological research. Even if it taps children’s thinking in pretend or simulation mode, it still presents a window into how children think, which concepts they use, which inferences they draw. Finally, the scope and limits of the method are discussed.
•Puppets are a useful and valuable research tool in developmental studies.•Using puppets is sometimes convenient, sometimes mandatory for practical or ethical reasons.•Puppets engage children in simulation, pretend, offline or as-if mode.•Even though children relate to puppets in simulation mode they still use their regular concepts and inferences.•Puppet studies thus present a clear window into the child’s mind.
In our article (Packer & Moreno-Dulcey, 2022) we pointed out that the use of puppets in Theory of Mind tasks (1) requires young children to pretend, which (2) introduces a confound, and also (3) ...reflects a failure to distinguish scientific and folk psychology. In their comments Lillard (2022) and Wellman and Yu (2022; Yu & Wellman, 2022) claim that use of puppets requires not pretense but an understanding that they ‘stand-in’ for people, without explaining how this differs from pretense, or how it avoids a confound. Rakoczy (2022) in contrast agrees with us that pretense is required but argues that it uses the same “code” and “concepts” as “the real world.” We recall his earlier appreciation that institutional reality has the logical form of pretense. We suggest that ‘mind’ is a culturally and historically bound institutional fact, and point out that a typical ToM task involves multiple levels of pretense, games, and institutional reality.
•The use of puppets in Theory of Mind tasks requires young children to pretend. This introduces a confound. It also reflects a failure to distinguish scientific and folk psychology.•The commentaries fail to address these issues.•We suggest that ‘mind’ is a culturally and historically bound institutional fact.•A typical ToM task involves multiple levels of pretense, games, and institutional reality.
In L'Homme de neige Sand rewrites Hamlet. Her protagonist is a character without a tragic flaw, who is rewarded with a happy ending both on the private and the political level. Shakespeare's play ...within the play, rejected as 'low' by the classical French tradition, is rediscovered and transformed into a puppet play. Not only does the mise en abyme serve to detect the usurper's crime, but, together with the fairytale rewriting of the tragedy, it enables the author to give expression to her high regard for popular art and to justify her anti-naturalistic literary program.
Cognitive Gains in 7-Month-Old Bilingual Infants Kovács, Ágnes Melinda; Mehler, Jacques; Carey, Susan E.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
04/2009, Volume:
106, Issue:
16
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Children exposed to bilingual input typically learn 2 languages without obvious difficulties. However, it is unclear how preverbal infants cope with the inconsistent input and how bilingualism ...affects early development. In 3 eye-tracking studies we show that 7-month-old infants, raised with 2 languages from birth, display improved cognitive control abilities compared with matched monolinguals. Whereas both monolinguals and bilinguals learned to respond to a speech or visual cue to anticipate a reward on one side of a screen, only bilinguals succeeded in redirecting their anticipatory looks when the cue began signaling the reward on the opposite side. Bilingual infants rapidly suppressed their looks to the first location and learned the new response. These findings show that processing representations from 2 languages leads to a domain-general enhancement of the cognitive control system well before the onset of speech.
Adults with Asperger syndrome can understand mental states such as desires and beliefs (mentalizing) when explicitly prompted to do so, despite having impairments in social communication. We directly ...tested the hypothesis that such individuals nevertheless fail to mentalize spontaneously. To this end, we used an eye-tracking task that has revealed the spontaneous ability to mentalize in typically developing infants. We showed that, like infants, neurotypical adults' (n = 17 participants) eye movements anticipated an actor's behavior on the basis of her false belief. This was not the case for individuals with Asperger syndrome (n = 19). Thus, these individuals do not attribute mental states spontaneously, but they may be able to do so in explicit tasks through compensatory learning.
Adults tend to like individuals who are similar to themselves, and a growing body of recent research suggests that even infants and young children prefer individuals who share their attributes or ...personal tastes over those who do not. In this study, we examined the nature and development of attitudes toward similar and dissimilar others in human infancy. Across two experiments with combined samples of more than 200 infant participants, we found that 9- and 14-month-old infants prefer individuals who treat similar others well and treat dissimilar others poorly. A developmental trend was observed, such that 14-month-olds' responses were more robust than were 9-month-olds'. These findings suggest that the identification of common and contrasting personal attributes influences social attitudes and judgments in powerful ways, even very early in life.
This article aims to reveal the locutionary and illocutionary forms of utterances made by the religious figure Ustaz Khalid Zeed Abdullah Basalamah, commonly known as Ustaz Basalamah, about the ...prohibition of wayang. To analyse the data, listening and recording techniques were used from the recorded question and answer between Ustaz Basalamah and the congregation regarding the prohibition of wayang. At the data analysis stage, the distributional method was used by emphasizing the lingual unit of the language that was the target of the research. Through various stages of analysis, the researcher found two of the five types of illocutionary speech acts in Searle's (1969) theory of Ustaz Basalamah's utterances. The two types of illocutionary speech acts are assertive and directive. In the assertive illocutionary act, the researcher found at least five utterances that fall into that category. Meanwhile, four utterances are included in the type of directive illocutionary speech act.
This study aims to reveal the elements that experience the process of cultural transformation and the meaning illustrated through the illustrations of wayang figures in the Serat Damarwulan ...Manuscript. In this study, descriptive qualitative methods are used, namely placing words or sentences in a logical structure to explain concepts in the relationships between existing elements. Furthermore the data in the form of a sign system will provide a more comprehensive understanding. Transformation of wayang characters is a transition or change that occurs in the surface structure of a set of symbols of figures in wayang to become figures that are likened to or equated with characters in Serat Damarwulan, while the structure in the puppet characters themselves has not changed. The results of this study indicate that the elements undergoing cultural transformation in addition to scripts and languages are also illustrations that show the character of wayang characters in the characters contained in the Serat Damarwulan Manuscript. Knight figures such as Ronggolawe and Damarwulan are portrayed as Bima and Arjuna characters. While evil figures like Menakjinggo are portrayed as giants. These figures give meaning in the Serat Damarwulan, but in their own way the characters remain or do not change. This shows that the Serat Damarwulan Manuscript describes the process of cultural transformation in the form of puppet characters from Hindu-Buddhist to Islam that goes peacefully by not changing the main character, storyline, or background.
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