title: What you get is what you believe: eighteen-month-olds demonstrate belief understanding in an unexpected-identity task.
abstract: Based on recent findings of implicit studies, researchers have claimed that even infants can understand others' false beliefs. However, it is unclear whether infants are able to understand others' belief about an object's identity when this object can be represented in different ways. In a novel interactive unexpected-identity task derived from the appearance-reality paradigm, 18-month-olds helped an adult to achieve her goal based on the adult's belief about an object's identity. To do so, they needed to understand how this adult represented this object--according to its appearance or its real identity--and to generalize these representations to a category of objects. The results suggest that infants' false-belief understanding is as sophisticated as that of preschool children.
authors.affiliation: Research Group "Kleinkindforschung in Thueringen", University of Erfurt, D-99089 Erfurt, Germany. Electronic address: visbuttelmann@ceu.hu.
authors.forename: Frances
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Buttelmann
authors.affiliation: Research Group "Kleinkindforschung in Thueringen", University of Erfurt, D-99089 Erfurt, Germany.
authors.forename: Janina
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Suhrke
authors.affiliation: Research Group "Kleinkindforschung in Thueringen", University of Erfurt, D-99089 Erfurt, Germany.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Buttelmann
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development; D032882:Comprehension; D003210:Concept Formation; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D056345:Theory of Mind
keywords: Appearance reality; Deceptive objects; Helping; Infants; Theory of mind; Unexpected-identity task