ABSTRACT
As members of a social species, a large part of our everyday lives involves predicting, interpreting, and responding to the behavior of other individuals. Adults typically do this by considering others’ underlying mental states. Thus, we readily understand that Dorothy wants to return home from Oz, does not know that the Wizard is actually just a man pretending to be a wizard, and falsely believes that he can send her home. Developmental psychologists have long been interested in how this psychological-reasoning ability develops. In particular, considerable research has focused on when children understand that others can be mistaken, or hold false beliefs, about the world. False-belief understanding provides evidence of the ability to distinguish between the mind and reality – to recognize that mental states are internal representations rather than direct reflections of the world. This sophisticated, and perhaps uniquely human (e.g., Kaminski, Call, & Tomasello, 2008; Marticorena, Ruiz, Mukerji, Goddu, & Santos, 2011), ability has been argued to play a vital role in cooperation, communication, and learning (e.g., Baillargeon et al., 2013; Herrmann, Call, Hernández-Lloreda, Hare, & Tomasello, 2007; Sperber & Wilson, 1995).
