title: Eighteen-month-old infants show false belief understanding in an active helping paradigm.
abstract: Recently, several studies have claimed that soon after their first birthday infants understand others' false beliefs. However, some have questioned these findings based on criticisms of the looking-time paradigms used. Here we report a new paradigm to test false belief understanding in infants using a more active behavioral response: helping. Specifically, the task was for infants to help an adult achieve his goal - but to determine that goal infants had to take into account what the adult believed (i.e., whether or not he falsely believed there was a toy inside a box). Results showed that by 18 months of age infants successfully took into account the adult's belief in the process of attempting to determine his goal. Results for 16-month-olds were in the same direction but less clear. These results represent by far the youngest age of false belief understanding in a task with an active behavioral measure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany. buttelmann@eva.mpg.de
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Buttelmann
authors.forename: Malinda
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carpenter
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tomasello
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*