title: Making sense of early false-belief understanding.
abstract: We address the puzzle about early belief ascription: young children fail elicited-response false-belief tasks, but they demonstrate spontaneous false-belief understanding. Based on recent converging evidence, we articulate a pragmatic framework to solve this puzzle. Young children do understand the contents of others' false belief, but they are overwhelmed when they must simultaneously make sense of two distinct actions: the instrumental action of a mistaken agent and the experimenter's communicative action.
authors.affiliation: Institut Jean Nicod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Pavillon Jardin, 29 rue d'Ulm, F-75005 Paris, France; Differential Psychology, Personality Psychology, and Diagnostics, Department I, University of Trier, 54286 Trier, Germany.
authors.forename: Katharina A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Helming
authors.affiliation: Institut Jean Nicod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Pavillon Jardin, 29 rue d'Ulm, F-75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Brent
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Strickland
authors.affiliation: Institut Jean Nicod, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Pavillon Jardin, 29 rue d'Ulm, F-75005 Paris, France. Electronic address: piotrjacob@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jacob
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans