Understanding of Affective False Beliefs, Perceptions of Parental Discipline, and Classroom Behavior in Children from Head Start

Fifty-five children (21 boys, 34 girls) between the ages of 3 years 6 months and 5 years 6 months from 3 Head Start classrooms were administered 5 affective false belief tasks and 5 hypothetical scenarios that measured their perceptions of parental discipline. A subset of 40 children were rated by their teachers for behavior problems in the classroom. Results indicated that children performed better on questions about their own false beliefs than on questions about others' false beliefs. Overall, children performed below average on the false belief measures. Children expected parents in the hypothetical scenarios to use power-assertive methods of discipline more often than induction or love withdrawal. As predicted, total false belief scores were negatively correlated with classroom behavior problems. Children who stated that they or the child in the scenario would feel sad after being disciplined were also less likely to experience behavior problems in the classroom. The results of this study, together with the results of previous research, suggest that children from Head Start populations are not performing as well on measures of false belief understanding as children from traditional preschool populations. The causes of this discrepancy and possible interventions should be explored in future research.