Preschool Children's Persuasion Knowledge: The ... - Allen Press

Preschool Children’s Persuasion Knowledge: The Contribution of Theory of Mind Anna R. McAlister and T. Bettina Cornwell Two studies investigate the influence of developmental variables on the emergence of persuasion knowledge in children ages three to five years. Theory of mind (a form of social development) consistently explains a significant amount of variance in children’s persuasion knowledge. Theory of mind is a well-researched variable in the developmental psychology literature. This form of social development enables a child to understand the mental states of others and to use that mental state understanding to predict others’ future behavior. The results of the current study indicate that before theory-of-mind development, children are unable to recognize persuasion in advertising, most likely because they cannot think about the intentions of the advertiser. The findings are important to the development of child consumer literacy and contribute to the extant literature by demonstrating that developmental factors can explain how persuasion knowledge develops. The authors discuss theoretical, practical, and public policy implications. Keywords: persuasion knowledge, advertising, theory of mind, preschool, children

n important socialization process for children is the development of “persuasion knowledge,” which is the ability to detect that advertisers “try to make you buy things” (Robertson and Rossiter 1974, p. 13). Understanding the onset and extent of persuasion knowledge has been a topic of importance for decades. A child’s understanding of persuasion attempts is important from a basic social science perspective because it represents a large field of social understanding. Persuasion knowledge is also essential to the development of healthy skepticism of and resistance to advertising. From a public policy perspective, children’s ability to understand persuasion is key in understanding their vulnerability and, thus, any needed protection (Ringold 2005) or educational intervention (Eagle 2007). It should also be central to the development of industry selfregulation (Armstrong and Brucks 1988). Indeed, the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (2009) specifically invoked considerations of “unfairness” in advertising directed at children (under age 12) in its most recent self-regulatory guidelines. The goal of the current research is to understand how children develop persuasion knowledge by considering their individual social development.

Background of Persuasion Knowledge

A

Perhaps the most clear starting point in the marketing literature on children’s persuasion knowledge research is the work of Roberston and Rossiter in 1974. Their study of children and commercial persuasion asked many of the questions that researchers are still considering today, including the extent to which children can discern persuasive intent. Despite considerable empirical work on persuasion knowledge in general, the field did not begin to coalesce until 1994, when Friestad and Wright published “The Persuasion Knowledge Model.” Although this model mainly addressed adults, it brought forward the role of the audience member’s persuasion knowledge and set forth both a nomenclature and an agenda for persuasion knowledge research. In a review of the consumer socialization literature, John (1999) considered persuasion knowledge and, specifically, research that investigated children’s understanding in five areas: (1) distinguishing commercials from programs, (2) understanding advertising intent, (3) recognizing bias and deception in advertising, (4) using cognitive defenses against advertising, and (5) knowing advertising tactics and appeals. John’s review of persuasion knowledge was organized along a trajectory of developing capabilities with, as might be expected, more studies of younger children associated with the less sophisticated aspects of distinguishing commercials and understanding intent. For example, Butter and colleagues (1981) showed advertisements embedded in child programming to test children’s ability to distinguish commercials from programs and found that 70% of fouryear-olds and 90% of five-year-olds could distinguish when an advertisement was being shown. In the 25-year period covered in John’s (1999) review, several studies examined advertising persuasion attempts,

Anna R. McAlister is a postdoctoral research fellow, UQ Business School, University of Queensland (e-mail: [email protected]. edu.au). T. Bettina Cornwell is Professor of Marketing and Sport Management, School of Kinesiology, University of Michigan (e-mail: [email protected]). The first author acknowledges support from University of Queensland postdoctoral research fellowship funding. Both authors acknowledge the parents and preschool teachers whose consent to the research project was fundamental to its success. Thanks are also extended to the three anonymous JPP&M reviewers, who provided helpful comments and suggestions during the review process. Elizabeth Moore served as associate editor for this article. © 2009, American Marketing Association ISSN: 0743-9156 (print), 1547-7207 (electronic)

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Journal of Public Policy & Marketing Vol. 28 (2) Fall 2009, 175–185

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but only a few studies (e.g., Donohue, Henke, and Donohue 1980; Macklin 1985) focused on young children. Donohue, Henke, and Donohue (1980) exposed children to advertising and then followed with a two-choice nonverbal assessment of the child’s understanding of advertising intent. They showed that 80% of two- and three-year-olds were able to identify intent, but the results were questioned by Macklin (1985), who argued that the task was too easy. Macklin replicated Donohue and colleagues’ study with a four-choice nonverbal task and found that 80% of children ages three to five could not identify advertising intent correctly. From the mixed methods and mixed findings in the literature, John concluded (p. 189) that “there is little reason to believe that the vast majority of children younger than seven or eight years of age have a command of advertising’s persuasive intent.” As for the remaining three areas of persuasion knowledge in John’s review—namely, recognizing deception, using cognitive defense, and understanding advertising tactics—studies on these topics were conducted with children beyond the preschool years. Understandably, emphasis in prior research has typically been placed on the age at which children are able to understand intent. In the early 1980s, following the 1978 Federal Trade Commission’s proposal of a trade regulation rule that would have severely restricted or banned all television advertising to children—researchers were particularly interested in determining the age at which children recognize persuasion in advertising. Congress subsequently prohibited any action on the proposed rule, but concerns remain about the fairness of advertising to young children if they are not able to clearly understand advertising intent (Armstrong and Brucks 1988). Renewed interest in research on child persuasion knowledge has arguably been fostered by two developments: the advent of the Internet and related technologies that reach children directly with advertising messages and the rising levels of overweight and obesity among children that is believed to be related, at least in part, to television viewing (see Desrochers and Holt 2007; Moore and Rideout 2007). In light of these developments, longstanding concerns about children’s understanding of advertising are a central focus again some 30 years after the original proposal to ban advertising to children (Moore 2007). In keeping with the renewed emphasis on child persuasion knowledge, Wright, Friestad, and Boush (2005) recently reviewed this area. They found that research on persuasion knowledge in children is in a state of “conceptual disarray” that makes interpreting the body of empirical work difficult. They cite aspects of conceptualization and method as problematic. However, it could also be argued that insights into children’s persuasion knowledge development and to related possible policy interventions could be enhanced by the adoption of a developmental perspective. Although age is potentially correlated with understanding of advertising intent, it is a gross indicator of various forms of development. To understand how children develop an appreciation of advertising intent, it is necessary to investigate variance within age groups. What is needed is an understanding of the individual child’s social development that enables him or her to understand another’s intention. For this, we turn to a construct called “theory of mind.”

Introduction to Theory of Mind Theory of mind refers to a form of social development that encompasses the ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, intentions, and desires) to oneself and others and to use that mental state understanding to theorize about future behavior. When a child has developed a theory of mind, he or she understands the mediating role of thought on behavior. For example, if a child knows that his or her friend is afraid of dogs, the child might predict that the friend will cross the street to avoid walking past a dog. This ability to theorize about the translation of mental states into behavior is arguably relevant to persuasion knowledge because the ability to detect persuasion in advertising requires a child to detect that advertisers intend to persuade and ultimately guide purchase behavior. To understand persuasion in advertising fully, a person must have the capacity to distinguish his or her own wants and needs from the desires of advertisers and to predict subsequent behavior according to those mental states. Thus, the primary purpose of this research is to investigate the role of theory of mind in children’s evolving persuasion knowledge. Wellman and Liu (2004) describe theory of mind as encompassing the following components, listed in order of typical developmental mastery: diverse desires (judging that two people can have different feelings toward the same object), diverse beliefs (judging that two people have different beliefs about the same object), knowledge access (understanding that another person may not have access to certain knowledge [e.g., the person has not seen inside a box, and therefore he or she does not know its contents]), false belief (knowing that a person’s behavior may be misguided if his or her belief about a situation is inaccurate), belief emotion (judging how a person will feel, given a belief that is mistaken), and real–apparent emotion (judging that a person may feel one thing but display a different emotion). Thus, an understanding of desires precedes an understanding of beliefs. Standard theory-of-mind tests require children not only to understand the mental states of themselves and others but also to predict future behavior on the basis of that distinction. For example, in a diverse desires task, a child is shown pictures of a cookie and a carrot and asked which food he or she prefers. The experimenter explains that a puppet prefers the alternative option and does not like the child’s preferred food. The child is then required to predict which food the puppet would like to eat for a snack. Successful performance at the task requires the child (1) to hold accurate representations of his or her own desire and the puppet’s desire and (2) to make a prediction about the puppet’s future behavior based on that mental state knowledge. At an early age, children are capable of understanding basic mental states; for example, infants and toddlers may understand desire and emotions, though they may not be able to predict how these mental states translate into behaviors (see Wellman, Cross, and Watson 2001). Diverse beliefs are mastered early in the preschool period, while false belief understanding is not common until approximately five years of age (Wellman, Cross, and Watson 2001; Wellman and Liu 2004). Later still is the development of the ability to appreciate the difference between real

Journal of Public Policy & Marketing

and apparent emotions, which remains a challenge for some five- and six-year-olds (Wellman and Liu 2004). Individual differences in theory-of-mind ability can be measured by assessing any one of the dimensions; however, Wellman and Liu (2004) argue that a battery of tests should be used so that children of various ages can be challenged during testing. Typically, false belief tasks are regarded as a “litmus” test of a child’s ability to think about another’s thoughts and how thoughts guide behavior; therefore, at minimum, most theory-of-mind studies use a false belief task to assess theory of mind (McAlister and Peterson 2006). In a standard false belief task, the child witnesses a series of events, typically enacted using dolls, in which the child gains knowledge that the doll does not gain (for a detailed description, see the “Method” section in Study 1). An important requirement of the task is that the child bases his or her prediction of the doll’s behavior on the doll’s false belief rather than on the child’s own belief. Pretheory-of-mind children will be incapable of predicting the doll’s uninformed behavior, because they themselves are informed from having witnessed the enacted events. Just as appreciation of another’s mental states equips a child to pass a false belief task, this component of theory of mind also readies a child to predict behaviors outside the lab. For example, false belief understanding has been found to be related to understanding humor and deception (Sodian et al. 1991). Each of these requires a child to think about others’ thoughts or feelings. A jack-in-the-box is funny if a child knows something will pop out of the box (i.e., he or she has a true belief about the object) and if the child knows that the other person does not know this yet (i.e., the child knows that the other person holds a false belief that the object is a music box or gift container). If the child uses his or her knowledge of the other person’s false belief to predict behavior (e.g., that the person will lean over the box to see the contents inside), the child may gain a special enjoyment of the joke that is different from the simple surprise of the popping Jack. In this research, we use individual differences in theory of mind to explain variance in children’s persuasion knowledge. In a marketplace context, the ability to think about the thoughts of advertisers and to theorize about possible responses depends on theory of mind. Even the questioning of one’s own response to advertising (e.g., “Will I purchase that?” “Do I want that?” “Is it as good as it looks?”) is predicated on the ability to think about others’ mental states (e.g., “They want to sell it to me,” “They want me to like it”). The need to understand mental states to detect advertising persuasion has led researchers to make bold claims about the relationship between the two forms of development: “Children’s recognition of the goals, intentions, beliefs, and biases underlying advertising is thoroughly dependent on how they think about the mind” (Moses and Baldwin 2005, p. 189). From a research perspective, Wright (2002, p. 677) argues that “frontier research in the coming decade would investigate how it is that children come to understand the mental states of advertisers” and maintains that theory of mind might naturally facilitate persuasion knowledge. Moreover, the American Psychological Association has identified theory of mind as a possible protective factor in

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relation to psychological issues arising from the increasing commercialization surrounding children (Kunkel et al. 2004). Despite these suggestions, no empirical study has tested the possible link between theory of mind and persuasion knowledge. Numerous prior studies have linked the development of persuasion knowledge to age, but with varied outcomes (Wright, Friestad, and Boush 2005). In general, it is accepted that children acquire persuasion knowledge at approximately eight years of age (Bever et al. 1975; Blosser and Roberts 1985; Kelly 1974; Robertson and Rossiter 1974). However, some studies have provided evidence of persuasion knowledge emerging in children as young as three to five years of age (e.g., Donohue, Henke, and Donohue 1980; Macklin 1985). Thus, we focus on this younger age group and attempt to determine whether theory of mind explains early knowledge of advertising persuasion.

Persuasion Knowledge Research with Children Macklin (1987) reviews some of the earliest studies of persuasion knowledge that contributed to the popular notion that children do not understand advertising persuasion until age eight. Given that those studies used interview questions to assess persuasion knowledge (e.g., “Why are commercials shown on television?”), Donohue, Henke, and Donohue (1980) argue that children’s responses may be swayed by their language ability. When Donohue, Henke, and Donohue used a nonverbal task to assess persuasion knowledge in children aged two to six years, 80% of children succeeded at the task, which required them—after seeing a Froot Loops advertisement—to point to one of two pictures (either a mother and child buying cereal at a supermarket or a child watching television) when asked, “What does Toucan Sam want you to do?” Donohue, Henke, and Donohue’s findings suggest that tasks with low verbal demands enable preschoolers to demonstrate their knowledge of persuasion. However, attempts to replicate these findings have been mixed (see Ballard-Campbell 1983; Kunkel 1988; Macklin 1985). Although the task of comparing findings across prior studies is complicated by differing methodologies, the inconsistency of findings raises the question of why some children show persuasion knowledge earlier than others. Some researchers have investigated the possibility that child persuasion knowledge development is influenced by cognitive ability. For example, Ward and Wackman (1973) administered cognitive tasks to categorize their sample of children ages 5–12 into one of three cognitive ability levels, similar to Piaget’s (1970) cognitive stages. They conclude (p. 127) that children with low cognitive ability show little knowledge of advertising persuasion because they “cannot abandon their own perspective and take the perspective of the advertiser when viewing commercials.” While Piaget’s (1970) theory asserts that children ages two to seven years are typically egocentric and do not engage in metacognition (i.e., they do not think about thinking), theory-of-mind researchers assert that children’s capacity to form mental representations of the thoughts of others develops during that period. Mental perspective taking is just one part of theory of mind because theory of


mind can be thought of as resting on mental perspective taking and requiring translation of the appreciation of mental states into a prediction about future behavior. McAlister and Peterson (2006, p. 734) provide an operational definition of theory of mind as the “awareness of subjective mental states and their mediating role in human behavior.” As we discussed previously, theory of mind can be understood as a continuum, with some components mastered earlier than others. Regardless of which component is assessed, successful performance on any standard theory-of-mind task requires a child to do more than engage in perspective taking. The child must also use his or her mental state knowledge to make behavioral predictions. Thus, to understand the difference between perspective taking (which has been discussed in some prior persuasion knowledge research) and theory of mind (which has never before been assessed in relation to persuasion knowledge development), it is necessary to consider that these constructs are also defined by the tasks used to measure them. While a perspective-taking task requires a child to acknowledge the difference between his or her own thoughts and the thoughts of another (i.e., to demonstrate that the child has moved beyond egocentric thought), a theory-of-mind task requires a child to differentiate his or her own thoughts from those of another and to theorize about the role of thoughts in mediating behavior. In summary, it could be argued that theory-of-mind tasks provide a more sensitive measure of individual differences because they capture components of a more sophisticated understanding and thus capture more variance with the tasks used to measure them. Although the terms “theory of mind” and “perspective taking” are occasionally used interchangeably (e.g., Ozonoff and Miller 1995), they are distinctive constructs, as demonstrated by their different measurement and predictive potential.

Theory of Mind as a Predictor of Persuasion Knowledge When individual differences in theory-of-mind development are measured, preschool children as young as age three show early signs of understanding the intentions of another person (Wellman and Woolley 1990), representing others’ mental states (Denham 1986; Lempers, Flavell, and Flavell 1977; Wellman and Woolley 1990), and understanding deception (Leekam 1991). At an even earlier age, children are capable of understanding mental states that do not involve representation; for example, infants and toddlers can understand desire and emotions (see Wellman, Cross, and Watson 2001). A meta-analysis of 178 theoryof-mind studies suggests that mental state understanding is relatively advanced by five years of age (Wellman, Cross, and Watson 2001), though it is also acknowledged that development continues past this age. On the basis of a literature review, Moses and Baldwin (2005) suggest that preschoolers with advanced theory of mind show commensurate persuasion knowledge. More specifically, they argue that emerging abilities should be evident in preschool children and that a sophisticated understanding of advertising persuasion will occur later in childhood. Preschoolers may recognize that an advertiser

wants them to purchase a product. This simple recognition of selling intent is based on first-order mental state understanding, which involves recognition of a unidimensional desire of another person (“The advertiser wants me to buy”). It has been argued that a more sophisticated appreciation of the persuasive intent of advertisers is reliant on so-called second-order mental states (Moses and Baldwin 2005, p. 192). Second-order mental state understanding involves thoughts about embedded mental states (e.g., “The advertiser wants me to like the product so that I will want to buy it”) and is not typically reached until late in the preschool period (Leekam 1991). Therefore, the youngest preschool children are likely to fail a persuasion knowledge task that requires sophisticated understanding of the trajectory of persuasion. Previously, we stated that our purpose herein is to investigate the role of theory of mind in emerging persuasion knowledge. Because prior studies have shown that children ages three to five years show signs of a rudimentary ability to detect basic selling intent (e.g., Donohue, Henke, and Donohue 1980; Macklin 1985), it seems appropriate first to examine a child’s ability to recognize a simple intent to sell. The basic ability to detect selling intent requires only firstorder mental state understanding and is not much different from children understanding that a parent wants them to brush their teeth (Moses and Baldwin 2005). Thus, we expect to find that mental state understanding (measured with standard theory-of-mind tasks) predicts persuasion knowledge. This theory seeks an age-independent understanding of development. Therefore, age is a control factor. We also control for language because language ability affects preschool children’s performance on persuasion knowledge tasks (Donohue, Henke, and Donohue 1980). Thus, our hypothesis is that theory of mind is a significant predictor of persuasion knowledge, after we control for age and language.

Study 1 Method Participants and Testing Procedure The participants were 49 children (22 boys, 27 girls) ages three years three months to five years five months (M = four years two months). All children were recruited from middle-class preschools. Following institutional review board approval for the project, center directors at each of two local preschools viewed the testing materials and signed consent forms indicating their willingness for the researchers to contact parents of children in their care. Consent forms were sent to all parents of children ages three to five years. The rate of return of consent forms, following a reminder letter, was 83%. No child had any developmental disorder, and all spoke English as their first language. The sample was predominantly Caucasian (96%) but also included two Asian children. On the consent form, parents reported their child’s date of birth and number of child-aged siblings. Most children in this sample had at least one sibling (n = 40). All households had a mother parent. The majority of mothers


had some formal education after secondary school (83%), and 57% of mothers had completed a university degree. This research employs two false belief tasks to test theory of mind, a diverse beliefs task appropriate for use with young preschoolers, and a pretend representation task as an additional measure to aid in the detection of individual differences among children. These four tasks have been used together as a test battery in prior research and yield good variance among preschool children (McAlister and Peterson 2006). We did not employ belief emotion and real–apparent emotion tasks in this research, because they are inappropriately complex for use with the youngest children in the sample (Wellman and Liu 2004).1 We measured theory of mind, language ability, and persuasion knowledge during individual testing sessions at preschools. Tasks were separated across two testing sessions, administered in counterbalanced order. One testing session included the persuasion knowledge and language tasks, and the other session consisted of theory-of-mind tasks in the following order: appearance–reality A, unseen displacement, pretend play A, unexpected contents, appearance–reality B, and pretend play B. The time between sessions was never more than three days.

Persuasion Knowledge Task and Scoring The persuasion knowledge task required children to view stimulus advertisements and then choose from a set of picture response options to indicate the advertiser’s intent. To establish that all children understood a task that required them to point to response options, each child was shown a stimulus picture that was not an advertisement. The picture showed Papa Smurf with a stop sign, holding one hand in the air. Each child was asked, “Show me what you should do when you see a stop sign.” The response options included “stop at the stop sign,” “give a high five,” and “walk across the road.” This question was worded to avoid any theory-of-mind requirements. Children were required to recall a fact (i.e., that a stop sign indicates “stop”) rather than infer Papa Smurf’s desires. All children had previously learned the meaning of a stop sign. Of the 49 participants, 46 passed this trial and qualified for scoring on the remaining task trials. The persuasion knowledge task employed in this study is similar to prior nonverbal measures of children’s persuasion knowledge (Donohue, Henke, and Donohue 1980; Macklin 1985). We sought a measure of persuasion knowledge with a large enough scale to differentiate across children. Thus, we used five advertisements as stimuli so that our scale score could range from zero to five. We chose print advertisements so that testing sessions could be conducted without the use of television or computers to deliver the stimuli. The use of five stimulus advertisements enabled us to investigate children’s ability to detect persuasive intent in advertisements from a range of product categories— namely, soda, fast food, cereal bars, shoes, and toys. 1Specific aspects of theory of mind are understood to develop later than others (for a thorough discussion of task scaling, see Wellman and Liu 2004). Wellman and Liu (2004) propose a specific order in which preschool children typically pass various theory-of-mind tests.

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To avoid issues of prior exposure while using existing brands for ecological validity, we manipulated the advertisements using a graphic design program to combine elements from a variety of existing advertisements for each product. In each trial, the child was presented with a color print advertisement that clearly depicted the product, the brand logo, a price, and brand logo images on the products. The child was then shown a color picture of a cartoon man whose shirt bore the relevant brand logo and was instructed, “Show me what the [KFC] man wants you to do.” A picture response card displayed three options. The correct response option for a KFC meal advertisement was “have the meal for dinner.” The remaining two options each depicted some other activity that was related to the advertisement and also involved the product. For the KFC advertisement, these included “play a drum with the drumsticks” and “wash the plates after dinner” because chicken drumsticks and plates were both illustrated in the KFC advertisement. Each of the three response options appeared in black-and-white, with the brand logo presented in color once in each picture. We randomized the order of presentation of the response options across participants (i.e., the correct option sometimes appeared on the left, sometimes in the middle, and sometimes on the right). Post hoc, we compared children’s frequency of choosing either of the two incorrect options per trial. None of these t-tests were significant, indicating that the children found the two incorrect options to be equally attractive on each trial. We combined children’s performance across the five trials to give a total persuasion knowledge score ranging from zero to five.

Theory-of-Mind Tasks and Scoring Children completed four theory-of-mind tasks. We did not employ simple desire tasks because we decided that they would not be sufficiently challenging to children ages three to five years. We borrowed the chosen tasks from the work of McAlister and Peterson (2006), who selected tasks that differ in terms of difficulty and therefore provide a sensitive measure for use with preschoolers. False belief. We used Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith’s (1985) unseen displacement task, following McAlister and Peterson’s (2006) protocol. In the first trial, the girl doll placed a marble in a basket and then left the scene, and the boy doll moved the marble to a box. In the second trial, the girl doll placed the marble in the basket, and in her absence, the boy doll moved it to the researcher’s pocket. In both trials, the girl returned to look for her marble, and children were asked the test question, “Where will the girl look first for her marble?” followed by two control questions: “Where is the marble really?” and “Where did the girl put the marble in the beginning?” All children passed these control questions. On each trial, test questions were worth one point. Thus, the maximum total score across trials was two. We enacted Gopnik and Astington’s (1988) misleading container task using a Band-Aid box containing crayons. Each child was shown the closed box and asked what was inside. All children expected the box to contain Band-Aids. The box was opened to reveal the crayons, and then it was closed again. A control question checked that children were


paying attention to the task: “What is really in the box?” This was followed by two test questions: “[Friend] is coming next. S/he hasn’t seen inside this box before. When I show it to him/her all closed up like this, what will s/he say is in it?” and “When I first showed you this box, before you looked inside, what did you think was in it?” Finally, another control question was asked: “What is really in it?” All children passed both control questions. One point was awarded for each correctly answered test question. Scores on these two tasks were significantly correlated (r(46) = .44, p < .01). Following McAlister and Peterson (2006), we created a total false belief score for each child by summing his or her scores on the tasks. Total false belief scores ranged from zero to four. Appearance–reality. The appearance–reality test was similar to Flavell’s (1986) two-trial test. Stimuli included a candle that looked like an apple and a pen that looked like a flower. In each trial, the child was shown the stimulus and was asked, “What does it look like?” All children passed this control question, showing that they were deceived by the appearance of the stimuli. The researcher then identified each object’s true identity and asked two test questions: “What is this really and truly?” and “When you look at this with your eyes right now, what does it look like.… Does it look like a [candle] or like [an apple]?” On each trial, children were awarded one point for answering both test questions correctly. Scores on the two trials were significantly correlated (r(46) = .56, p < .001). We created total appearance–reality scores by summing across the trials. Pretend representation. Following McAlister and Peterson (2006), we assessed children’s awareness of representational pretending with a two-trial task. Each trial began with the child being shown either a banana or a potato. The child was asked to play pretend (i.e., use the banana as a phone and the potato as a bar of soap). The researcher then indicated that the pretend play had ended and asked, “What is this really?” and “What did we pretend this was?” Two more objects were placed on the table with the original object. One was a real version of the pretend item (e.g., a real cell phone) and the other was an irrelevant decoy (e.g., a tennis ball). The researcher asked the final two test questions: “Which one did we pretend was a [phone/soap]?” and “Which one is really a [phone/soap]?” Each trial involved four test questions, each of which was worth one point per correct response. Scores on the trials were significantly correlated (r(46) = .44, p < .01). We averaged children’s trial scores to give a total out of four.

Table 1.

Total theory-of-mind score. False belief was correlated with both appearance–reality (r(46) = .47, p < .01) and pretend representation (r(46) = .32, p < .05). Pretend representation and appearance–reality were correlated (r(46) = .32, p < .05). Thus, we calculated a total theory-of-mind score. First, we computed a proportion score for each component by dividing false belief and pretend representation totals by four and the appearance–reality total by two. Second, we calculated the average of these so that total theory-of-mind scores could range from zero to one. The composite score had adequate internal consistency (α = .61).

Language Task and Scoring We estimated children’s language ability using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-4 (PPVT-4), a standardized test of receptive vocabulary (Dunn and Dunn 2007). On each page of the test book, children saw four pictures. The researcher said a word, and the child was told to point to the correct picture. We calculated PPVT-4 raw scores according to the strict guidelines set out in the test manual.

Results and Discussion As Tables 1 and 2 show, the children exhibit average language ability for their age. Age, theory of mind, and language ability are all significantly correlated. No ceiling or floor effects are evident in the persuasion measure (M = 1.85 on a scale from zero to five). Table 3 provides detailed information regarding children’s performance on the persuasion knowledge task. To test the hypothesis, we ran a multiple regression analysis with persuasion knowledge as the dependent variable. We entered age and language as control variables at Step 1. We entered theory of mind as a predictor at Step 2. The model was significant at Step 1 (R2 = .16, F(2, 43) = 5.20, p < .05), and addition of the predictor variable at Step 2 provided a significant increase in explained variance (R2 = .78, ΔF = 120.83, p < .001). Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that theory of mind was a significant predictor of persuasion knowledge (β = .88, t(42) = 10.99, p < .001). Although persuasion knowledge is only emerging in young children, it is clearly linked to theory of mind. In the full model, 59% of variance in persuasion knowledge is accounted for by children’s theory-of-mind scores. These results are consistent with Moses and Baldwin’s (2005) prediction that preschool children’s persuasion knowledge is dependent on theory of mind. Note that the zero-order correlation between theory of mind and persuasion knowledge

Mean (SD) Values for Variables Measured in Study 1 by Age Age Group

Age Language (PPVT raw score) Theory of mind Persuasion knowledge

Threes (n = 15)

Fours (n = 24)

Fives (n = 7)

Total Sample

3.73 (.21) 46.20 (9.58) .55 (.17) .93 (1.22)

4.31 (.25) 59.00 (14.05) .68 (.26) 1.96 (1.76)

5.18 88.57 .91 3.43

4.25 (.52) 59.33 (18.16) .67 (.25) 1.85 (1.79)

(.52) (8.52) (.13) (1.90)


Table 2.

Correlations Between the Variables Measured in Study 1

Language Age Language Theory of mind

Theory of Mind

Persuasion Knowledge

.47* .40* —

.44* .39* .89**

.86** —

*p < .01. **p < .001.

Table 3.

Persuasion Knowledge Score 0 1 2 3 4 5 Total

Children’s Persuasion Knowledge Performance in Study 1 Children Who Achieved Score (n)

Percentage of Sample (%)

15 9 6 6 4 6 46

32.61 19.56 13.04 13.04 8.70 13.04 100

is higher than the correlations among the individual theoryof-mind tasks, possibly indicating that composite theory-ofmind ability more accurately reflects children’s abilities to think about mental states in applied contexts (e.g., understanding advertising in a marketplace context) than their ability to think about mental states in specific or narrow contexts (e.g., in relation to just one component of theory of mind on individual tasks). What remains to be tested is whether preschool children are capable of responding accurately to a more challenging persuasion task involving multiple mental states. In Study 1, the persuasion task required children to recognize a firstorder mental state (e.g., “The [KFC man] wants me to buy/ consume”). In Study 2, we employ a persuasion knowledge task that requires children to think about embedded mental states (e.g., “The [KFC man] wants me to tell my mom to buy”). Successful performance on this second-order task requires children to think about (1) what the advertiser wants them to do and (2) their parent’s intentions.

Study 2 The purpose of Study 2 is to assess preschool children’s recognition of advertising persuasion using a task that demands that they understand multiple mental states. Children typically do not develop the ability to understand multiple mental states simultaneously until late in preschool (Wellman, Cross, and Watson 2001). If we find that some preschool children are capable of successful performance at a more challenging persuasion knowledge task, we will then want to know whether theory of mind can predict this success. Consistent with Study 1, we measure language as a control variable and assess the hypothesis that individual differences in theory of mind predict persuasion knowledge.

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Method Participants and Testing Procedure Participants were 62 children (29 boys, 33 girls) ages three years zero months to five years five months (M = four years two months). All children were recruited from middle-class preschools following the same procedure from Study 1. The rate of return of consent forms, following a reminder letter, was 74%. All children spoke English as their first language. The sample was predominantly Caucasian (95%), with one Asian child and two Indian children. Most children in this sample had at least one sibling (n = 51), and all had a mother parent. Approximately half the mothers had a university degree (45%), and most had received some form of education after secondary school (84%). The testing procedure was identical to that employed in Study 1, except for changes to the persuasion knowledge task and its response options. For clarity and because this task is related to second-order mental state understanding, we refer to this as “persuasion knowledge task 2.” Persuasion Knowledge Task 2 and Scoring As in Study 1, there was one preliminary (nonscored) trial and five scored trials. The preliminary trial was identical to that used in Study 1. Of the 62 participants, 54 passed the control task and qualified for scoring on the remaining tasks. On the five scored trials, the stimulus advertisements were identical to those used in Study 1; however, instructions required second-order mental state reasoning. Children were first shown an advertisement and then a picture of a man and were instructed, “Show me what the [KFC] man wants you to tell your mom to do.” The change to the instructions to include the words “to tell your mom” was made to require children to think about the future intentions of their mothers as well as the advertiser. The response options were the same as those in Study 1, except that now all response options included a mother and child. We calculated each child’s total persuasion score by summing across the trials. Theory-of-Mind and Language Tasks and Scoring Children completed the same four theory-of-mind tasks used in Study 1. All children passed control questions on all tasks and therefore qualified for scoring. Among the false belief tasks, scores on the two-trial unseen displacement task were significantly correlated with scores on the singletrial misleading container task (r(53) = .41, p < .01). Therefore, we created a total false belief score for each child by summing his or her scores on these two tasks (ranging from zero to four). We again administered the appearance–reality task using the flower/pen and apple/candle stimuli. Trial scores were correlated (r(53) = .52, p < .001). We created total appearance–reality scores by summing the scores on the two trials (ranging from zero to two). We administered the two-trial pretend representation task using the banana, potato, and distracter items. Children’s scores on the banana/phone trial were related to scores on the potato/soap trial (r(53) = .52, p < .001). We averaged scores on the trials to give a total out of four, similar to the false belief total.

182 Preschool Children’s Persuasion Knowledge Table 4.

Mean (SD) Values for Variables Measured in Study 2 by Age Age Group

Age Language (PPVT raw score) Theory of mind Persuasion knowledge 2

Threes (n = 14)

Fours (n = 31)

3.72 (.21) 63.29 (5.77) .56 (.18) .71 (.99)

4.38 (.27) 78.13 (11.97) .66 (.25) 1.26 (1.55)

False belief was significantly related to appearance– reality (r(53) = .44, p < .01) and to pretend representation (r(53) = .34, p < .05). Moreover, appearance–reality and pretend representation were correlated (r(53) = .27, p < .05). On the basis of these correlations, we again calculated a total theory-of-mind score for each child. This composite score had good internal consistency (α = .70). We measured children’s language ability using the PPVT-4 (Dunn and Dunn 2007). The procedure and scoring were identical to those in Study 1.

Results and Discussion As Tables 4 and 5 show, the children exhibit average language ability for their age. There are significant correlations among age, theory of mind, and language. Similar to Study 1, the children show variation in their emerging persuasion knowledge on persuasion knowledge task 2 (M = 1.31). Table 6 provides details of the number of children performing at each level in persuasion knowledge task 2. To test the hypothesis, we ran a multiple regression analysis with age and language as control variables at Step 1. We entered theory of mind at Step 1. Entry of the control variables produced a nonsignificant model at Step 1 (R2 = .03, F(2, 51) = 1.79, not significant). The addition of the predictor variable at Step 2 provided a significant increase in explained variance (for the full model, R2 = .52, ΔF = 52.97, p < .001). Consistent with the hypothesis, theory of mind was a significant predictor of persuasion knowledge task 2 (β = .80, t(50) = 7.28, p < .001). Similar to Study 1, the failure of the age and language controls to provide a significant contribution at Step 1 and the lower mean score on persuasion knowledge task 2 both point to the increased sophistication of the second-order mental state task. In the full model, 48% of unique variance in persuasion knowledge is accounted for by the children’s theory-of-mind scores. The link between theory of mind and persuasion knowledge is consistent with the hypothesis that to understand the persuasive intentions of advertisers, children must be able to understand that the intentions of another person may differ from their own thoughts and intentions.

Overall Discussion We designed Studies 1 and 2 to determine whether certain developmental variables might influence emergence of persuasion knowledge in preschool children. Although several studies have concluded that children do not understand the persuasive intent of advertising until approximately age eight (Bever et al. 1975; Blosser and Roberts 1985; Kelly 1974; Robertson and Rossiter 1974), others have reported

Table 5.

Fives (n = 9) 5.17 100.78 .82 2.44

Total Sample

(.13) (8.20) (.20) (2.19)

4.34 (.52) 78.06 (15.65) .66 (.24) 1.31 (1.62)

Correlations Between the Variables Measured in Study 2

Language Age Language Theory of mind

Theory of Mind

.84*** —

.46** .28** —

Persuasion Knowledge .25 .18 .73***

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 6.

Children’s Persuasion Knowledge Performance in Study 2

Persuasion Knowledge 2 Score 0 1 2 3 4 5 Total

Children Who Achieved Score (n)

Percentage of Sample

26 8 8 5 3 4 54

48.15 14.81 14.81 9.26 5.56 7.41 100

subsamples of preschool children who demonstrate the notion that advertisements “try to make you buy things” (e.g., Donohue, Henke, and Donohue 1980; Macklin 1985; Robertson and Rossiter 1974). Our goal was to determine whether individual differences in theory-of-mind development could explain why some preschool children detect advertising persuasion sooner than others.

Theoretical Contribution The findings contribute to a theoretical understanding of how children develop persuasion knowledge. We used measures from developmental psychology to determine the role of social development (theory of mind) in children’s development of persuasion knowledge. Our findings regarding age support prior conclusions that persuasion knowledge is not mastered in children ages three to five years (John 1999; Kunkel et al. 2004). In both studies, we find that preschool children’s persuasion knowledge is not advanced but is developing. The major theoretical contributions come from what we have learned about the influence of theory of mind. In both


studies, theory of mind was a strong predictor. This supports the propositions of several prior researchers that theory of mind may be a prerequisite to children’s development of persuasion knowledge (Kunkel et al. 2004; Moses and Baldwin 2005; Wright 2002). Consistent with Moses and Baldwin (2005), we conclude that children must first be able to understand that another person’s inner mental states differ from their own mental states to detect persuasive intent in advertising. The finding that theory of mind explains a large amount of variance in persuasion knowledge in children as young as three to five years of age is consistent with evidence that representationbased theory of mind emerges at age three and continues to grow until mastery occurs at approximately age six (Denham 1986; Lempers, Flavell, and Flavell 1977; McAlister and Peterson 2006; Wellman and Woolley 1990). Further research should consider whether preschool children are capable of the sophisticated mental processing required to deduce how persuasion is practiced by advertisers. That is, to truly understand (rather than simply recognize) persuasion in advertising, it is necessary to understand that the advertiser’s intention is to shift the beliefs or desires of potential consumers (Moses and Baldwin 2005). Adults recognize that persuasion occurs when advertisers shift their beliefs (e.g., “I don’t need that” becomes “I should buy that. I might need it someday”) or desires (e.g., “I don’t want that” becomes “I wish I had one of those”). Preschool children may not understand that advertising may present a biased portrayal of product characteristics and performance. It has previously been argued that development of healthy skepticism and cognitive resistance to advertising comes after the ability to detect persuasion in advertising (John 1999). Thus, although our data show an emergence of persuasion knowledge in preschoolers, it should not be assumed that preschool children have a sophisticated ability to think critically about advertising messages. Moreover, even the basic ability to detect persuasion is not present for all preschoolers. In Study 1, 33% of children scored zero on the persuasion knowledge task, and in Study 2, this figure was 48%. In terms of public policy considerations, young children continue to be vulnerable and thus deserving of protection.

Limitations The samples used in each of our two studies were limited in that all children were recruited from middle-class preschools. John (1999) notes several studies that show that a child’s background and family environment play a significant role in the acquisition of persuasion knowledge. Thus, the current findings cannot be generalized to children with either more or less privileged backgrounds. A further limitation of this research is that we did not establish the direction of causality in the relationship between theory of mind and persuasion knowledge. The findings have been interpreted in a manner consistent with prior suggestions that theory of mind would precede children’s development of persuasion knowledge (Kunkel et al. 2004; Moses and Baldwin 2005; Wright 2002). In the absence of longitudinal data to support this developmental trajectory, however, there remains the possibility that expo-

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sure to persuasive messages (e.g., through advertising) helps children understand others’ intentions, desires, and beliefs. Although we acknowledge that the direction of the relationship between theory of mind and persuasion knowledge is not established in the current studies, we can offer several reasons for having interpreted theory of mind as a prerequisite to persuasion knowledge. First, other researchers have argued that theory of mind necessarily underpins children’s knowledge of advertising persuasion (e.g., Moses and Baldwin 2005; Wright 2002). Second, Bartsch, London, and Campbell (2007) assert that early theory-of-mind development predicts a subsequent ability for young children to generate persuasive arguments. This conclusion is related to generation of persuasion rather than recognition of advertising persuasion but is based on a finding that six-year-olds demonstrated competence in theory-of-mind tasks (75% accuracy) before succeeding at a test of persuasion (44% accuracy). Taking this approach, we can draw a similar conclusion about directionality from our data. In both studies, no child scored zero on the theory-of-mind scale, while a sizable percentage scored zero on the persuasion knowledge task (33% in Study 1, 48% in Study 2). This does not conclusively demonstrate that theory of mind develops before persuasion knowledge, and we acknowledge that the theory-of-mind and persuasion knowledge scales are not necessarily equally sensitive. However, it lends credence to the notion that theory of mind likely develops before persuasion knowledge.

Applications and Directions for Further Research Wright (2002) notes the need to identify factors that act as natural catalysts to children’s acquisition of persuasion knowledge. He argues that the current marketplace represents an unfair playing field because advertisers are trained to engage in persuasive practices, while children currently receive no institutionalized training in metacognitive practice (i.e., how to think about the intentions of others). Given this inequality, young consumers remain vulnerable to the manipulative efforts of advertisers until they, too, are trained in metacognition (Wright 2002). Future studies could investigate whether theory-of-mind training can be used to promote persuasion knowledge in preschool children, though it would be necessary first to establish the direction of the relationship between theory of mind and persuasion knowledge. To assess directionality in the relationship, a longitudinal study could be conducted. The gap time would only need to be 12 months because preschool children’s theory-of-mind development (and, presumably, persuasion knowledge) will show considerable growth over that period. With data from two times, researchers could determine whether Time 1 theory of mind contributes to the prediction of Time 2 persuasion knowledge beyond the effects of Time 1 persuasion knowledge, while controlling for age and language. This analysis would allow for a more confident conclusion regarding directionality. Further research might also investigate the extent to which various types of sibling interactions promote recog-


nition of persuasion in advertising. As Wright, Friestad, and Boush (2005) discuss, it may be the case that exposure to persuasion that is not related to advertising is a precursor to a child’s ability to detect persuasion embedded in advertising. Further research could assess the frequency and nature of child-to-child persuasion attempts to learn whether experience with persuasion attempts in one context (e.g., sibling conflict) influences children’s knowledge of persuasion in advertising in particular. Similarly, further research might address the role of advertising exposure to determine whether children with extensive advertising experience develop persuasion knowledge sooner than children whose advertising exposure is limited. In concert with this type of research, early versus late theory-of-mind development could be assessed for any additional benefits or downside risks. The findings from this research provide initial insight into the role of social development in the emergence of children’s persuasion knowledge. This insight sheds new light on the long-standing policy concerns with young children’s vulnerability to advertising. As Ringold (2005) and Eagle (2007) highlight, the development of protection or educational interventions should be grounded in an understanding of children’s persuasion knowledge. Thus, our findings may prove useful in advancing protection, policy, and intervention programs by enhancing the current understanding of how persuasion knowledge develops.

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