Children's understanding of the stream of consciousness.
J H Flavell, F L Green, E R Flavell
Child development April 1, 1993 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1993.tb02916.x (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Children (including 4-year-olds and preschoolers) and adults |
| Keywords | Humans Child development Cognition Awareness Consciousness Adult Child, preschool Female Psychology, child |
| Key findings | The tendency to attribute ongoing thoughts to a quietly waiting person increased markedly with age from preschool to adulthood. Four-year-olds tended to say a waiting person's mind was "not doing anything" and that a person could keep their mind "completely empty of all thoughts and ideas" for 3 minutes. The authors suggest preschoolers' conceptions of mental life may differ considerably from those of older children and adults. |
Abstract
Children and adults were tested for their understanding that there is a virtually continuous flow of mental content in a waking person, a "stream of consciousness" that continues to run even when the person is not examining stimuli perceptually or trying to solve a problem. There was a marked increase with age from preschool to adulthood in subjects' tendency to say that a person who was just waiting quietly was having "some thoughts and ideas" rather than "a mind empty of thoughts and ideas." 4-year-olds also tended to say that the mind of a waiting person was "not doing anything," whether that person was another individual or themselves, and that a person who wanted to could keep his or her "mind completely empty of all thoughts and ideas" for 3 min. These results suggest that preschoolers' conceptions of people's mental lives may be quite different from those of older children and adults.
Citations in the library
Cited by 3
- Inner Speech: Development, Cognitive Functions, Phenomenology, and Neurobiology Psychological Bulletin May 25, 2015
- Imaginary companions and young children's responses to ambiguous auditory stimuli: implications for typical and atypical development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry November 1, 2007
- The "adualistic" representation of trauma: on malignant internalization. American Journal of Psychotherapy 1999