Theory of puppets or theory of mind? Misunderstanding how children construe puppets in psychological research: A commentary on Packer and Moreno-Dulcey (2022)

In a recent article in this journal, Packer and Moreno-Dulcey (2022) critique research on social cognition for so often using puppets and dolls in its research tasks instead of real persons. First, they suggest that such tasks have dubious validity including low ecological validity. Then they suggest when children's performance on social-cognitive using puppets and dolls mirrors their performance with real people, children are pretending the puppets are real people. We argue that this misconstrues how children treat puppets in typical social-cognitive research: Children do not pretend puppets are people in such tasks; instead, they accept the experimental framing that the puppet represents a person. Children take the puppet as an acceptable and common stand-in for a person.

Automated summary

The criticism towards the use of puppets and dolls in social cognition research is misguided, as children do not pretend that puppets are real people, but rather accept them as representations of people.