ABSTRACT
There is an unfortunate syndrome loose in developmental psychology: Call it “neurotic task fixation.” Those of us interested in children’s developing understanding of the mind have begun to notice the first symptoms of this disease with queasy anxiety. The task in question is, of course, the Wimmer and Perner (1983) false belief task. This chapter and, we hope, this volume is, in part, an attempt to stop the disease before it kills an interesting field yet again. The question should not be “Can three-year-olds do false belief?” Instead, we should ask what aspects of an understanding of belief develop in what ways and in what order, and how these changes are related to one another. How is three-year-olds’ early knowledge of the mind related to their later knowledge? How do precursors lead to the things they precurse?
