Título: | ON THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS: THE FEATURE POINT OF VIEW OF COMPLEMENT CLAUSES AND THE MASTERING OF FALSE BELIEFS | ||||||||||||
Autor: |
CLARA NOVOA GONCALVES VILLARINHO |
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Colaborador(es): |
LETICIA MARIA SICURO CORREA - Orientador MARINA ROSA ANA AUGUSTO - Coorientador |
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Catalogação: | 14/AGO/2013 | Língua(s): | PORTUGUESE - BRAZIL |
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Tipo: | TEXT | Subtipo: | THESIS | ||||||||||
Notas: |
[pt] Todos os dados constantes dos documentos são de inteira responsabilidade de seus autores. Os dados utilizados nas descrições dos documentos estão em conformidade com os sistemas da administração da PUC-Rio. [en] All data contained in the documents are the sole responsibility of the authors. The data used in the descriptions of the documents are in conformity with the systems of the administration of PUC-Rio. |
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Referência(s): |
[pt] https://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/projetosEspeciais/ETDs/consultas/conteudo.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=21874&idi=1 [en] https://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/projetosEspeciais/ETDs/consultas/conteudo.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=21874&idi=2 |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.17771/PUCRio.acad.21874 | ||||||||||||
Resumo: | |||||||||||||
This dissertation investigates the hypothesis that acquiring knowledge
concerning the syntactic feature Point-of-View (PoV) in CPs of complement
clauses (CCs) subcategorized by verbs of belief is a necessary condition for
children to achieve a fully developed Theory of Mind (ToM) – the ability to
ascribe false beliefs (FBs) to others and to predict their reasoning and action based
on it (usually achieved by 4 years of age) (cf. DE VILLIERS AND DE
VILLIERS, 2009) (henceforth, PoV-FBHypothesis). In particular, this study
aimed to verify the extent to which PoV-FBH can be maintained; to evaluate the
possibility of incorporating a PoV feature in an on-line model of syntactic
computation grounded in minimalist assumptions (Corrêa & Augusto, 2007;
2011) and to characterize the developmental course of the acquisition of
knowledge concerning this feature in the light of a procedural theory of language
acquisition (Corrêa, 2009). The possibility of PoV being represented as a formal
feature or as a semantic feature was considered in three analyses of CCs. It is
argued that no matter how this feature is characterized, the acquisition of the
knowledge it represents would inevitably rely on semantic bootstrapping, which
presupposes the cognitive ability of distinguishing points of view. As for the
empirical investigation, 8 experiments were conducted. Experiments 1-6 aimed at
assessing 3;3-3;5 year olds ability to cope with a number of the demands of the
traditional FB and Memory for Complements (MC) tasks, which supports PoVFBH,
such as the ability to cope with object WH, the factivity of mental verbs and
factuality. The production of CCs and childrens ability to cope with a linguistic
task that includes a FB situation were also investigated. In experiment 7,
childrens ability to assign truth-values to CCs and for both clauses of the
complex sentence was evaluated. In Experiment 8 the role of language recursion
for first- and second-order FB reasoning was investigated with 6;2 year-old
children. In general, the results suggested that i) childrens failure on the
traditional FB and MC tasks does not necessarily mean difficulty in dealing with
CCs or FBs, insofar as they do not cope with most of the demands these tasks
presuppose; ii) 3 year olds correctly assign truth-values to CCs, though assigning
the truth-value for the main clause (the whole sentence) independently of the
truth-value of the CC is particularly costly; iii) first- and second-order FB
reasoning can be undertaken on the basis of non-recursive structures, although
recursive structures seem to facilitate it. In sum, both in the light of the possible
developmental courses of acquisition considered here and on the basis of the
results obtained, it would be hard for the PoV-FBH to be maintained, as it stands.
Metacognitive abilities may be required for children to be able to ignore the truthvalue
of the CC when assigning a truth-value for the complex sentence. It is
argued that the possible role of CCs in the development of ToM is to provide a
representation that can be used to facilitate FB reasoning, not to support it.
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