We learn to understand others after age 4
Researchers have found why at around the age of four children suddenly do what three-year-olds are unable to do -- put themselves in someone else\'s shoes.
New York: Researchers have found why at around the age of four children suddenly do what three-year-olds are unable to do -- put themselves in someone else's shoes.
This enormous developmental step occurs as a critical fibre connection in the brain matures, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.
For the study, the research team from Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig, Germany and Leiden University in the Netherlands analysed MRI data and behavioural data of 43 normally developing 3- and 4-year-old children.
One region is at the back of the temporal lobe that supports adult thinking about others and their thoughts, and the other is in the frontal lobe that is involved in keeping things at different levels of abstraction and, therefore, helps us to understand what the real world is and what the thoughts of others are.
Only when these two brain regions are connected through the arcuate fascicle can children start to understand what other people think, the study said.
