title: Eighteen-month-olds understand false beliefs in an unexpected-contents task.
abstract: Recent studies suggest that infants understand that others can have false beliefs. However, most of these studies have used looking time measures, and the few that have used behavioral measures are all based on the change-of-location paradigm, leading to claims that infants might use behavioral rules instead of mental state understanding to pass these tests. We investigated infants' false-belief reasoning using a different paradigm. In this unexpected-contents helping task, 18-month-olds were familiarized with boxes for blocks that contained blocks. When an experimenter subsequently reached for a box for blocks that now contained a spoon, infants based their choice of whether to give her a spoon or a block on her true or false belief about which object the block box contained. These results help to demonstrate the flexibility of infants' false-belief understanding.
authors.affiliation: Research Group "Kleinkindforschung in Thueringen", University of Erfurt, D-99089 Erfurt, Germany; Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: david.buttelmann@uni-erfurt.de.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Buttelmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany; Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK.
authors.forename: Harriet
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Over
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany; School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9JP, UK.
authors.forename: Malinda
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carpenter
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tomasello
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006379:Helping Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: False belief; Goal understanding; Helping; Infancy; Prosocial behaviour; Theory of mind