ABSTRACT
It is well documented that children aged three years seldom acknowledge false belief, either in themselves or in others. Instead, they typically judge the content of belief by reference to whatever maintains presently in reality. Acknowledging false belief is of great theoretical importance, serving as a litmus test for crediting an individual with a theory of mind. Many researchers prominent in this field of investigation argue that the emergence of an understanding of false belief is stage-like and due to a radical conceptual shift occurring around the time of the child’s fourth birthday. Contrary to this prevailing view, I wish to argue that development takes the form of children gradually coming to attach more weight to a representational criterion rather than a realist one when judging about belief. Yet we would still need to account for the presence of early realist errors. Paradoxically, from an ecological/evolutionary perspective, realism could be adaptive in that it might be vital for the very young child to have a preoccupation with reality. In this light, it is not that realist errors are a default consequence of the child’s failing to understand about belief. Rather, such errors mask a theory of mind competence that remains largely dormant in the early years. A couple of implications of this view are that: (1) the rudiments of a theory of mind owe more to genetic inheritance than world experience, and (2) development in this domain takes the form of smooth evolution rather than conceptual revolution.
