Later renovations of the experiment have since contradicted the egocentrism theory when more child appropriate' equipment, such as the Cops and Robbers Game' was used. This and many other experiments have stemmed from Piaget's theory. Gates in 1923 was possibly the first to test children's ability in recognising mental states. His findings concur with those of his colleague (Piaget), in underestimating the cognitive ability of preoperational children. Presumably, with egocentrism, a two to seven year old would have not yet developed theory of mind' (Premack & Woodruff, 1978; Wellman, 1990), that is, in interpreting and predicting the actions of others, and the ability to recognise mental states or emotions on faces. This was the conclusion of the two early psychologists who additionally believed that the ability for this type of comprehension only developed in the teenage years (Gates) and into the Concrete Operation Stage from ages seven to eleven. This would suggest that as this ability develops there should be an increase in the accuracy of tasks as age increases within this range.
The ability of adults to recognise facial mental states over the basic six emotional facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear and surprise (Ekman 1973, 1992) is an area that has not been extensively researched. In this experiment the latter was tested with adults and with children between the ages of eight and eleven. Facial paintings and drawings from two artists, the modern British Hockney and the seventeenth century Spaniard Velazquez were shown with a the subject giving a forced choice response. It aimed to determine whether adults had the ability to recognise emotional states from faces and whether the children were able to as well. Concurrently, any increase in the accuracy of the responses as age ascended was also recorded. From more current research it was hypothesised that both sets of subjects were able to correctly identify a great percentage of the faces, with no distinct increase between the eight year olds and the adults.
