title: Early False-Belief Understanding.
abstract: Intense controversy surrounds the question of when children first understand that others can hold false beliefs. Results from traditional tasks suggest that false-belief understanding does not emerge until about 4 years of age and constitutes a major developmental milestone in social cognition. By contrast, results from nontraditional tasks, which have steadily accumulated over the past 10 years, suggest that false-belief understanding is already present in infants (under age 2 years) and toddlers (age 2-3 years) and thus forms an integral part of social cognition from early in life. Here we first present an overview of the findings from nontraditional tasks. We then return to traditional tasks and argue that processing difficulties, rather than limitations in false-belief understanding, account for young children's failure at these tasks.
authors.affiliation: Psychological Sciences, University of California, Merced, 5200 North Lake Road, Merced, CA 95343, USA. Electronic address: rscott@ucmerced.edu.
authors.forename: Rose M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Scott
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, 603 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820, USA.
authors.forename: Renée
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Baillargeon
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D003210:Concept Formation; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D002666:Psychology, Child
keywords: false-belief understanding; psychological reasoning; social cognition; theory of mind