False-belief understanding in infants

By R. Baillargeon, Rose M. Scott, Zijing He. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2010

881 citations recorded by the source corpus.

At what age can children attribute false beliefs to others? Traditionally, investigations into this question have used elicited-response tasks in which children are asked a direct question about an agent's' false belief. Results from these tasks indicate that the ability to attribute false beliefs does not emerge until about age 4. However, recent investigations using spontaneous-response tasks suggest that this ability is present much earlier. Here we review results from various spontaneous-response tasks which suggest that infants in the second year of life can already attribute false beliefs about location and identity as well as false perceptions. We also consider alternative interpretations that have been offered for these results, and discuss why elicited-response tasks are particularly difficult for young children.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Cultural Studies, Developmental and Educational Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/06a8015225066cd6c2f80e76d54e4c7361f8728d

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Citations in the corpus

Two Systems for Mindreading? (2016, background): “A number of different one-system accounts have been proposed (Leslie et al. 2004; Baillargeon et al. 2010; Carruthers 2013).4 Here I will sketch what I take to be the most plausible version of such a view.”
The Direct-Perception Model of Empathy: a Critique (2011, background): “But as many psychologists (e.g. Bloom and German 2000; Leslie 2000, 2005; Baillargeon et al. 2010) have emphasized, there is more to successfully passing a standard false belief task than the ability to represent another’s false belief.”
Replications of implicit theory of mind tasks with varying representational demands (2017, background): “Looking times to these two trial types are then compared (e.g. Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005; Surian et al., 2007; Song et al., 2008; Scott & Baillargeon, 2009; Träuble et al., 2010; Scott, Baillargeon, Song & Leslie, 2010; for a review see Baillargeon et al., 2010).”
Probing the depth of infants’ theory of mind: Disunity in performance across paradigms (2017, background): “It has been proposed that infants perform better on the violationof-expectation task and other tasks based on spontaneous responses because, unlike the traditional elicited- response task, these tasks involve less heavy processing demands (Baillargeon et al., 2010; Scott, 2017).”
To belief or not belief: Children’s theory of mind (2014, background): “For instance, Baillargeon, Scott, and He (2010) concluded that, ‘‘the ability to attribute false beliefs to others is already present by the second year of life’’ (p. 116).”
Linguistic cues facilitate children’s understanding of belief-reporting sentences (2021, background): “…while more recent research using spontaneous non-verbal tasks found that infants in their second year of life can already reason about others’ false beliefs (e.g. Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005; Song et al., 2008; Southgate et al., 2007; Surian et al., 2007; for a review, see Baillargeon et al., 2010).”
Do Apes Read Minds?: Toward a New Folk Psychology (2012, background): “It used to be thought that children couldn't pass until age four or so, but recent evidence based on violation of expectation (looking times) and anticipatory looking has infants passing at younger than age two (Onishi and Baillargeon 2005; Baillargeon, Scott, and He 2010).”
The Role of Language in Theory of Mind Development. (2014, background): “Thus, several researchers have argued that implicit false-belief understanding is present from a very early age (Baillargeon et al., 2010).”