ABSTRACT
Over the past few years we have presented arguments for how children might acquire an understanding of behaviour (Ruman, 2014; Ruman, Perkins, & Taumoepeau, 2012). Our version of minimalism is sketched in Figure 5.1. It assumes some innate or early developing abilities in infants, including attention to the face, interest in motion and the capacity for statistical learning. Infants’ attention to the face is helpful because the face expresses mental states such as attention and emotion, and the same is true for motion. For instance, I walk to and open the freezer because
I want ice cream and believe it is there. Statistical learning helps infants to recognise patterns of behaviour, for instance, that one reaches continually for one object as opposed to another, or for an object in a particular place rather than another place. It is very dicult to say exactly when a child understands mental states rather than behaviour, although we have argued that there are signs such an understanding is in place by around 2 years (see Ruman, 2014, and below).
