Our ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of other people does not initially develop
as a theory but as a mechanism. The 'theory of mind'mechanism (ToMM) is part of the core …

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive review of the burgeoning literature on
theory of mind (TOM) after the preschool years and the first to integrate this literature with …

To test young children's false belief theory of mind in a morally relevant context, two
experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, children (N= 162) at 3.5, 5.5, and 7.5 years of …

Ducks lay eggs' is a true sentence, andducks are female'is a false one. Similarly,mosquitoes
carry the West Nile virus' is obviously true, whereasmosquitoes don't carry the West Nile …

Several theoretical formulations suggest a relation between children's pretense and
executive function (EF) skills. However, there is little empirical evidence for a correlation …

During conversation, interlocutors build on the set of shared beliefs known as common
ground. Although there is general agreement that interlocutors maintain representations of …

Children (aged 6–10) and adults (total N= 136) completed a novel visual perspective‐taking
task that allowed quantitative comparisons across age groups. All age groups found it …

Effective belief-desire reasoning requires both specialized representational capacities—the
capacity to represent the mental states as such—as well as executive selection processes …

On belief–desire reasoning tasks, children first pass tasks involving true belief before those
involving false belief, and tasks involving positive desire before those involving negative …

Humans' unique aptitude for reasoning about mental states, known as Theory of Mind (ToM),
can help explain the unique character of human communication and social interaction. ToM …