Using a standard prediction of action task, we Žnd that normally developing 3-yearold children successfully take into account a protagonist’s false belief when asked a ‘look Žrst’ question. When asked this same question in a true belief scenario, 3-yearolds also correctly predict a protagonist’s action even though in this case the correct answer is the second (full) location rather than the Žrs...

It was long assumed that the capacity to represent false beliefs did not emerge until at least age four, as evidenced by children's performance on elicited-response tasks. However, recent evidence that infants appear to demonstrate false-belief understanding when tested with alternative, non-elicited-response measures has led some researchers to conclude that the capacity to represent beliefs e...

In two studies, 4- to 6-year-olds were asked to name pictures of animals for the benefit of a watching hand puppet (the ongoing task) but to refrain from naming and to remove from view any pictures of dogs (the prospective memory [PM] task). Children also completed assessments of verbal ability, cognitive inhibition, working memory, and false-belief understanding (both studies), empathy (Study ...

The ability to reason about another person’s mental states, such as belief, desires and knowledge – first-order theory of mind – develops between the ages three and four. On the other hand, children need one or two more years to reason about a person who reasons about another person – secondorder theory of mind. Is it possible to accelerate the development of theory of mind? There are several t...

In prior research on false autobiographical beliefs and memories, subjects have been asked to imagine fictional events and have been exposed to false evidence that indicates that the fictional events occurred. But what are the relative contributions of imagination and false evidence toward false belief and memory construction? In the present study, subjects observed and copied various simple ac...

In prior research on false autobiographical beliefs and memories, subjects have been asked to imagine fictional events and they have been exposed to false evidence that indicates the fictional events occurred. But what are the relative contributions of imagination and false evidence toward false belief and memory construction? Subjects observed and copied various simple actions, then viewed doc...

Theory-of-mind concepts in children with deafness, autism, and normal development (N = 154) were examined in three experiments using a set of standard inferential false-belief tasks and matched sets of tasks involving false drawings. Results of all three experiments replicated previously published findings by showing that primary school children with deafness or autism, aged 6 to 13 years, scor...

An established body of literature indicates that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty understanding figurative language due to a deficit in theory mind, or the ability consider beliefs other people. Children ASD tend similarly fail traditional mind tasks, which assess their represent false beliefs. Our claim is, however, these tasks involve cognitive processing demands m...

Whether young children understand that others may hold false beliefs is a hotly debated topic in psychology and neuroscience. Much evidence suggests that children do not pass this milestone in their understanding of other people until the age of 5 years. Other evidence suggests that they understand already in their second year. This study proposes a novel account of the logic of conversations a...