ABSTRACT
The focus of the last chapter was on children's explicit mindreading judgements, which has provided the main evidence base for thinking about the cognitive basis of mindreading. However, standard interpretations of this evidence have been called into question by a growing body of research on infants and non-human animals. It may seem unconventional to group infants and non-human animals together in a single chapter, but for current purposes I think there are good reasons for doing so. For one, both infants and non-human animals are distinctly lacking in language and executive function. If we observe mindreading abilities in these groups then we can assume that they are not heavily dependent on these resources, and this, in turn, might help us re®ne our interpretation of the apparent interdependence of mindreading, language and executive function in children. Another reason for considering human infants and non-human animals together is that evidence of mindreading in these groups comes from indirect behavioural measures, rather than the explicit judgements that are typical in studies of children. Largely as a result of this, evidence from infants and non-human animals raises similar interpretive questions about what should count as evidence of mindreading. And ®nally, in other cognitive domains, such as number and spatial cognition, comparisons between infants and non-human animals have been extremely informative about the nature and origins of their cognitive abilities. I think the literature on mindreading is only just beginning to exploit the informative value of such comparisons.
