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We argue for teleology as a description of the way in which we ordinarily understand others’ intentional actions. Teleology starts from the close resemblance between the reasoning involved in understanding others’ actions and one’s own practical reasoning involved in deciding what to do. We carve out teleology’s distinctive features more sharply by comparing it to its three main competitors: theory theory, simulation theory, and rationality theory. The plausibility of teleology as our way of understanding others is underlined by developmental data in its favour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental files theory explains why children pass many perspective taking tasks like the false belief test around age 4 (Perner & Leahy, 2016). It also explains why older children struggle to understand that beliefs about an object depend on how one is acquainted with it (intensionality or aspectuality). If Heinz looks at an object that is both a die and an eraser, but cannot tell by looking that it is an eraser, he will not reach for it if he needs an eraser. Four- to 6-year olds find this difficult (Apperly & Robinson, 1998). We tested 129 35- to 86-month olds with a modified version of Apperly and Robinson's task. Each child faced four tasks resulting from two experimental factors, timing and mode of information. Timing: Children saw Heinz learn the die's location either before or after they learn that the die is an eraser. Mode of information: Heinz learns where the die is either perceptually or verbally. When Heinz' learning is verbal, he never perceives the die at all. We found that Apperly and Robinson's problem occurs only in the seen-after condition, where Heinz sees the die afterchildren had learnt that it was also an eraser. It vanishes when Heinz learns where the die is before children learn that it is also an eraser. The problem also vanishes when Heinz learns where the die is purely verbally (e.g., "The die is in the red box") and never sees it. This evidence lets us refine existing mental files theory, and eliminate several alternatives from the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a cognitive analysis of how children represent belief using mental files. We explain why children who pass the false belief test are not aware of the intensionality of belief. Fifty-one 3½- to 7-year old children were familiarized with a dual object, e.g., a ball that rattles and is described as a rattle. They observed how a puppet agent witnessed the ball being put into box 1. In the agent's absence the ball was taken from box 1, the child was reminded of it being a rattle, and emphasising its being a rattle it was put back into box 1. Then the agent returned, the object was hidden in the experimenter's hands and removed from box 1, described as a "rattle," and transferred to box 2. Children who passed false belief had no problem saying where the puppet would look for the ball. However, in a different condition in which the agent was also shown that the ball was a rattle they erroneously said that the agent would look for the ball in box 1, ignoring the agent's knowledge of the identity of rattle and ball. Their problems cease with their mastery of second-order beliefs (she thinks she knows). Problems also vanish when the ball is described not as a rattle but as a thing that rattles. We describe how our theory can account for these data as well as all other relevant data in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main thrust of this paper is to argue that teleology is the way by which we tend to understand ourselves and others in routine cases. Since teleology has an inbuilt slant towards cooperation, it may be the essence of what made Homo sapiens , starting with Homo heidelbergensis , the cooperative species it is. We present the critical features of the teleological approach in terms of justifying reasons for action. These features differentiate teleology from theory of mind (theory theory) and mental simulation. Our emphasis on justifying reasons also distinguishes our teleology from other approaches under the same heading. We also point out the limitations of teleology when it comes to competition, understanding subjective mental perspectives and cultural differences. Although our grand picture is speculative, we firm up our claims with data from children's cooperation and their appreciation of competition that appear in stages reminiscent of Piaget's view on development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I applaud Ruffman for cautioning us against interpreting early sensitivity to others' beliefs as evidence for an innate theory of mind and for making room for learning. In turn, however, I caution against his claim that all infants need is to understand that people act depending on what they perceive. Instead, infants may keep experiential records (Perner & Roessler, 2010) for other people or records of what they have registered (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009), which makes it less obvious that all required knowledge can be acquired by statistical learning. As a general criticism I remonstrate with current theory of mind research on its lack of concern that we understand people as acting for reasons which goes beyond detecting lawful regularities in behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tested one hundred and nine 3- to 6-year-old children on a knowledge-ignorance task about knowledge in humans (mother, baby) and God. In their responses, participants not reliably grasping that seeing leads to knowing in humans (pre-representational) were significantly influenced by own knowledge and marginally by question format. Moreover, knowledge was attributed significantly more often to mother than baby and explained by agent-based characteristics. Of participants mastering the task for humans (representational), God was largely conceived as ignorant 'man in the sky' by younger and increasingly as 'supernatural agent in the sky' by older children. Evidence for egocentrism and for anthropomorphizing God lends support to an anthropomorphism hypothesis. First-time evidence for an agent-based conception of others' knowledge in pre-representational children is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Counterfactual reasoning ( CFR)-mentally representing what the world would be like now if things had been different in the past-is an important aspect of human cognition and the focus of research in areas such as philosophy, social psychology, and clinical psychology. More recently, it has also gained broad interest in cognitive developmental psychology, mainly focusing on the question of how this kind of reasoning can be characterized. Studies have been inconsistent in identifying when children can use CFR. In this article, we present theoretical positions that may account for this inconsistency and evaluate them in the light of research on counterfactual emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence is accumulating that infants are sensitive to people''s false beliefs, whereas children pass the standard false belief test at around 4 years of age. Debate currently centres on the nature of early and late understanding. We defend the view that early sensitivity to false beliefs shown in ‘online tasks’ (where engagement with ongoing events reflects an expectation of what will happen without a judgement that it will happen) reflects implicit/unconscious social knowledge of lawful regularities. The traditional false belief task requires explicit consideration of the agent''s subjective perspective on his reasons for action. This requires an intentional switch of perspectives not possible before 4 years of age as evidenced by correlations between the false belief task and many different perspective-taking tasks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Counterfactual reasoning about how events could have turned out better is associated with the feeling of regret. However, developmental studies show a discrepancy between the onset of counterfactual reasoning (at 3 years) and the feeling of regret (at 6 years). In four experiments we explored possible reasons. Experiment 1 (3- to 6-year-old children) and Experiment 2 (adult control) show that even when regret is assessed more directly than in previous studies (e.g., Amsel & Smalley, 2000) only adults but not children regret their decision. Experiment 3 (3- to 14-year-old children) suggests that double-questioning—asking children how happy they are with what they got before and after they had seen what they could have got—creates false positive indications of regret in the youngest children and that—when controlling for false positives—regret is not evident before 9 years. However, children before this age make a difference between attractive (three candies) and less attractive (one candy) items (Experiment 4; 6- to 8-year-old children). Taken together, this suggests that before 9 years of age children base their judgements solely on what they got without taking into account what they could have got. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including interference processes, behavior and mental-states rules and executive function and language.

Is knowledge structured and acquired as independent facts and concepts, as parcels of independent domains, or as domains that share conceptual abilities? For an answer, we looked at the development of two concepts, belief and identity. These concepts are not part of the same domain, but the application of both depends on the common ability to separate sense from reference. We show that both capacities become functional between the ages of 3 and 5 years, which provides empirical support for the contention that deep conceptual structures play an important role in cognitive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We investigate the common development of children’s ability to “look back in time” (retrospection, episodic remembering) and to “look into the future” (prospection). Experiment 1 with 59 children 5 to 8.5 years old showed mental rotation, as a measure of prospection, explaining specific variance of free recall, as a measure of episodic remembering (retrospection) when controlled for cued recall. Experiment 2 with 31 children from 5 to 6.5 years measured episodic remembering with recall of visually experienced events (seeing which picture was placed inside a box) when controlling for recall of indirectly conveyed events (being informed about the pictures placed inside the box by showing the pictures on a monitor). Quite unexpectedly rotators were markedly worse on indirect items than non-rotators. We speculate that with the ability to rotate children switch from knowledge retrieval to episodic remembering, which maintains success for experienced events but has detrimental effects for indirect information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In a study with 79 3-year-olds, we confirm earlier findings that separating the sorting dimensions improve children''s performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) task. We also demonstrate that the central reason for this facilitation is that the two sorting dimensions are not integral features of a single object. Spatial separation of the sorting dimensions has no additional significant influence. This finding highlights the important role of objects with respect to children''s attentional flexibility. Implications for current theories on the DCCS task and for the development of perspective taking and cognitive flexibility are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In most developmental studies the only error children could make on counterfactual tasks was to answer with the current state of affairs. It was concluded that children who did not show this error are able to reason counterfactually. However, children might have avoided this error by using basic conditional reasoning (Rafetseder, Cristi-Vargas, & Perner, 2010). Basic conditional reasoning takes background assumptions represented as conditionals about how the world works. If an antecedent of one of these conditionals is provided by the task, then a likely conclusion can be inferred based only on background assumptions. A critical feature of counterfactual reasoning is that the selection of these additional assumptions is constrained by actual events to which the counterfactual is taken to be counterfactual. In contrast, in basic conditional reasoning one enriches the given antecedent with any plausible assumptions, unconstrained by actual events. In our tasks basic conditional reasoning leads to different answers from counterfactual reasoning. For instance, a doctor, sitting in the park with the intention of reading a paper, is called to an emergency at the swimming pool. The question, “If there had been no emergency, where would the doctor be?” should counterfactually be answered “in the park”. But by ignoring the doctor's intentions, and just reasoning from premises about the default location of a hospital doctor who has not been called out to an emergency, one might answer: “in the hospital”. Only by 6 years of age did children mostly give correct answers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of mind draw on processes that represent mental states and their computational connections; simulation, in addition, draws on processes that replicate (Heal ) a sequence of mental states. Moreover, mental simulation can be triggered by input from imagination instead of real perceptions. To avoid confusion between mental states concerning reality and those created in simulation, imagined contents must be quarantined. Goldman bypasses this problem by giving pretend states a special role to play in simulation (Goldman ). We argue that this path leads to the resurgence of the threat of collapse (Davies ), diluting the principled distinction between simulation and theory use. Exploration of a related method of real-mental states operating in a pretend mode leads to a factually untenable model. Our main goal here is to raise this problem as a challenge for Goldman’s reconfigured simulation theory. Only at the end we will briefly sketch a possible alternative way of quarantine that preserves the replicative element of simulation and avoids collapse. Figure 1 provides a guide to our argument.[Figure not available: see fulltext.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By combining the false belief (FB) and photo (PH) vignettes to identify theory-of-mind areas with the false sign (FS) vignettes, we re-establish the functional asymmetry between the left and right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). The right TPJ (TPJ-R) is specially sensitive to processing belief information, whereas the left TPJ (TPJ-L) is equally responsible for FBs as well as FSs. Measuring BOLD at two time points in each vignette, at the time the FB-inducing information (or lack of information) is presented and at the time the test question is processed, made clear that the FB is processed spontaneously as soon as the relevant information is presented and not on demand for answering the question in contrast to extant behavioral data. Finally, a fourth, true belief vignette (TB) required teleological reasoning, that is, prediction of a rational action without any doubts being raised about the adequacy of the actor's information about reality. Activation by this vignette supported claims that the TPJ-R is activated by TBs as well as FBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Franz and Gegenfurtner (2008) argue that the evidence for a division of labour within the visual system for action and perception is flawed because perception is often measured by manual estimation, which responds in general with a larger slope to a change of physical size than does adjusting. Therefore results obtained under manual estimation have to be corrected for this difference in slope: In a reanalysis of six studies grasping and perception were equally influenced by the illusion after this correction. However, closer inspection of methods reveals that visual feedback was confounded with conditions (suppressed vision while grasping vs. full vision while adjusting). We argue that studies can produce relevant and decisive data only when they (a) do not confound conditions with visual feedback, (b) do not allow online corrections of the action due to a direct comparison of the hand with the target, and (c) do not provide any risk of grasping being memory driven when the target is removed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discovery that 3-year-old children have difficulties understanding false belief has fuelled two decades of research directed at understanding why children have this problem. One unresolved question is whether false belief problems are due to difficulties with mental or representational aspects of mental states. This question has implications for current arguments about the domain specificity of theory of mind in typically developing children and in populations with autism and brain damage. We revisit this question, presenting evidence that preschoolers' difficulty with false belief is not a domain-specific problem with mental states but a more general difficulty with understanding representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Dimensional Change Card Sorting task frequently is used to measure extradimensional shifting abilities in preschool children. In two studies, we investigated what makes this extradimensional shifting task difficult. In Study 1 with 61 2- to 4-year-olds, we showed that extradimensional shifts from one dimension to another are more difficult than reversal shifts within a dimension (even with irrelevant variation on a second dimension). Study 2 with 77 3- and 4-year-olds further confirmed this finding using a computerized paradigm and showed that sorting instructions are critical for 3-year-olds’ difficulties with extradimensional shifts. This finding is taken to suggest that 3-year-olds have particular problems with spontaneously classifying one object in two different ways. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Brain imaging of adults during false-belief story tasks consistently shows activation of the temporoparietal junction in English-speaking Americans and German-speaking Europeans. Kobayashi et al. find this observation in adult English speakers but not in English-speaking children or in English–Japanese bilingual persons. This finding suggests a cultural or linguistic influence on location of brain function and argues against maturation of innately specified neural substrates. It is reminiscent of effects of linguistic development, bilingualism and cultural differences on theory of mind development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We resume an exchange of ideas with Uta Frith that started before the turn of the century. The curious incident responsible for this exchange was the finding that children with autism fail tests of false belief, while they pass Zaitchik's (1990) photograph task (Leekam & Perner, 1991). This finding led to the conclusion that children with autism have a domain-specific impairment in Theory of Mind (mental representations), because the photograph task and the false-belief task are structurally equivalent except for the nonmental character of photographs. In this paper we argue that the false-belief task and the false-photograph task are not structurally equivalent and are not empirically associated. Instead a truly structurally equivalent task is the false-sign task. Performance on this task is strongly associated with the false-belief task. A version of this task, the misleading-signal task, also poses severe problems for children with autism (Bowler, Briskman, Gurvidi, & Fornells-Ambrojo, 2005). These new findings therefore challenge the earlier interpretation of a domain-specific difficulty in inferring mental states and suggest that children with autism also have difficulty understanding misleading nonmental objects. Brain imaging data using false-belief, "false"-photo, and false-sign scenarios provide further supporting evidence for our conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our objectives in this article are to bring some theoretical order into developmental sequences and simultaneities in children’s ability to appreciate multiple labels for single objects, to reason with identity statements, to reason hypothetically, counterfactually, and with beliefs and desires, and to explain why an ‘implicit’ understanding of belief occurs before an ‘explicit’ understanding. The central idea behind our explanation is the emerging grasp of how objects of thought and desire relate to real objects and to each other. To capture this idea we make use of the notion of discourse referents, as did Perner and Brandl (2005) , to explain the developmental link between understanding beliefs and alternative naming. We present confirming evidence of the prediction from this analysis that children should have comparable problems with understanding identity statements. We explain the precociously correct answers in ‘implicit’ false belief tests based on indirect measures in the following way: From infancy children are able to keep track of other people’s experiences, to reason about counterfactual circumstances, and to reason about goal-directed (rational) action depending on given circumstances. Indirect tasks reduce the bias to use actual circumstances for reasoning about goal directed action compared to the traditional task, which leads to more correct answers. An emerging metarepresentational understanding helps overcome these biases and enables not only correct action prediction but also the explanation of erroneous actions. The common metarepresentational element explains why false belief tasks and the alternative naming task are mastered at the same time as children understand identity statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been found that children appreciate the limited substitutability of co-referential terms in opaque contexts a year or two after they pass false belief tasks (e.g. Apperly and Robinson, 1998, 2001, 2003 ). This paper aims to explain this delay. Three- to six-year-old children were tested with stories where a protagonist was either only partially informed or had a false belief about a particular object. Only a few children had problems predicting the protagonist’s action based on his partial knowledge, when he was only partially informed about a property of the desired object (e.g. he knew that it was a Lego® block, but not that it was a red Lego® block). But many had problems making the correct action prediction when he was only partially informed about dual identities (e.g. he knew it was a dog, but not that it was also an eraser). About as many children made an incorrect action prediction for partial knowledge problems involving dual identity as answered higher-order belief questions incorrectly. In contrast many more children answered first-order false belief questions correctly, as many as correct action predictions when the protagonist was partially informed about a property of an object. The results support the claim that children have a specific problem with dual identity, rather than a broader problem representing partial knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting new versions of the false belief and "false" photo vignettes used by Saxe & Kanwisher (2003) we were able to show activation in all five areas previously reported. Activations by added false sign and temporal change control vignettes in these areas showed that the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ-R) is specifically associated with processing mental states like belief. In contrast, TPJ-L was also activated by false signs suggesting an association with processing perspective differences for mental and non-mental objects in line with work on visual perspective tasks. A similar, but less clearly interpretable pattern of activations was also found in the middle temporal gyrus, precuneus and in the MPFC. These results are discussed in relation to findings in normal development where false belief and false sign tasks associate more strongly with each other than does each of them with the "false" photo task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Visual illusions provide important evidence for the co-existence of unconscious and conscious representations. Objects surrounded by other figures (e.g., a disc surrounded by smaller or larger rings, Ebbinghaus/Titchener illusion) are consciously perceived as different in size, while the visuo-motor system supposedly uses an unconscious representation of the discs’ true size for grip size scaling. Recent evidence suggests other factors than represented size, e.g., surrounding rings conceived as obstacles, affect grip size. Use of the diagonal illusion avoids visual obstacles in the path of the reaching hand. Results support the dual representation theory. Grip size scaling follows actual size independent of illusory effects, which clearly bias conscious perception in direct comparisons of lengths (Experiment 1) and in finger-thumb span indications of perceived length (Experiment 2). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Reviews [Frith, U., Frith, C.D., 2003. Development and neurophysiology of mentalising. Philos. Trans. R. Soc., B 358, 685–694.] of several imaging studies report robust involvement of medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) in “theory of mind” (ToM) tasks. Surprisingly, this activation is notably absent when judging another person''s visual perspective [Vogeley, K., May, M., Ritzl, A., Falkai, P., Zilles, K., Fink, G.R., 2004. Neural correlates of first-person perspective as one constituent of human self-consciousness. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 16, 817–827.]. The objective of our study was to see whether this activation can be recovered when the difference between what observers see is clearly one of perspectives (in front vs. behind) and not potentially a difference in what observers are looking at. Despite this change, there was still no apparent activation of MPFC. We did find activation in the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) recently emphasized as centrally involved in processing false belief stories [Saxe, R., Kanwisher, N., 2003. People thinking about thinking people: The role of the temporo-parietal junction in “theory of mind”. NeuroImage 19, 1835–1842.], which also create a stark contrast of perspectives. By integrating extant neurophysiological evidence on theory of mind processing, we suggest that the dorsal part of the TPJ region is responsible for representing perspective differences and making behavioral predictions, while the more ventral part of TPJ and the MPFC region is responsible for predicting behavioral consequences and the MPFC also emotional consequences of mental states. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The dimensional change card-sorting task (DCCS task) is frequently used to assess young children's executive abilities. However, the source of children's difficulty with this task is still under debate. In the standard DCCS task, children have to sort, for example, test cards with a red cherry or a blue banana into two boxes marked with target cards showing a blue cherry and a red banana. Typically, 3-year-olds have severe problems switching from sorting by one dimension (e.g. color) to sorting by the other dimension (e.g. shape). Three experiments with 3- to 4-year-olds showed that separating the two dimensions as properties of a single object, and having them characterize two different objects (e.g. by displaying an outline of a cherry next to a red filled circle on the card) improves performance considerably. Results are discussed in relation to a number of alternative explanations for 3-year-olds’ difficulty with the DCCS task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to explore factors that affect the difficulty of counterfactual reasoning in 3–5-year-old children and to shed light on the reason why counterfactual reasoning relates to understanding false belief [Cognitive Development, 13 (1998) 73–90]. Using travel scenarios, the difference between simple scenarios, in which each departure point led to exactly one destination, and complex scenarios, in which each of the departure points was cross-connected with all destination points, proved very important. In simple scenarios even 3SHAPE="BUILT" ALIGN="C" STYLE="S">12-year olds gave 75% correct answers to counterfactual questions, a level achieved on complex scenarios a year, and on false belief questions, irrespective of scenario, 1SHAPE="BUILT" ALIGN="C" STYLE="S">12 years later. Since simple scenarios require the same kind of reasoning as complex scenarios, this calls into question the suggestion by Peterson and Riggs [Mind & Language 14 (1999) 80–112] that modified derivation is the common denominator for answering counterfactual questions and questions about false belief. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Two studies investigated the parallel developmental progress in theory of mind and executive control, as exemplified by correlations between the Dimensional Change Card Sorting task (DCCS; Frye, Zelazo, & Palfai, 1995) and the false-belief task. Experiment 1 with sixty 3-year-old children confirmed earlier studies (e.g., Perner & Lang, 2002), suggesting that children's problem with the DCCS lies in the redescription of stimulus objects. Experiment 2 with forty-four 3- to 4-year-olds reinforced the correlational evidence for a developmental link by showing transfer of training: False-belief training improved DCCS performance, and DCCS training significantly increased children's performance on the false-belief task. Results are discussed in relation to 5 theories explaining the existing correlational evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments with 44 children 41/2 to 51/2 years old provide evidence against the contention by Fabricius and Imbens-Bailey (2000) that 4- to 5-year-old children who just master the false belief test do not yet understand belief, only ignorance. These children are, nevertheless, thought able to give correct answers on the traditional test by using the heuristic that ignorant people look in the wrong place because in these tests only one wrong location figures. This hypothesis was tested by comparing 2 location stories with 3 location stories in which the third location was strongly highlighted by the procedure. With only 5 exceptions on some occasions-no child ever assumed that the protagonist would look in the wrong location other than that in which he believed the object to be. The discussion clarifies how this finding can be consolidated with the results by Fabricius and Khalil (this issue) that were presented in support of the hypothesis by Fabricius and Imbens-Bailey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do children become consciously aware of events in the world? Five possible strategies are considered for their usefulness in determining the age in question. Three of these strategies ask when children show signs of engaging in activities for which conscious awareness seems necessary in adults (verbal communication, executive control, explicit memory), and two of the strategies consider when children have the ability to have the minimal form of higher-order thought necessary for access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness, respectively. The tentative answer to the guiding question is that children become consciously aware between 12 and 15 months (±3 months). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the last of a series of experiments 48 3–5-year old children were tested on an alternative naming game with “synonyms,” e.g., if puppet calls the depicted item a “rabbit” the child has to call it a “bunny,” or the child has to judge puppet’s performance when roles are reversed. The game was also played with categories (rabbit–animal), name/colour (rabbit–black), colour/colour (black–white), and part/part (head–tail). The younger children (≤3.5 years) had severe problems with “synonyms” and categories (alternative names for the items, <10% correct), but not with names and colours, only colours, or only parts (>80% correct). Children’s increasing success with age on the alternative names tasks was closely paralleled (.53≤r≤.72) by their mastery of the false belief task in which they had to predict that a mistaken story character would look for a desired object in the wrong location. For explaining the synchrony between alternative naming and understanding false belief we draw on the Piagetian idea that children come to represent perspective at some point in their development. To apply this idea to the alternative naming game we draw on the philosophical discussion about sortals (terms that specify what sort of object something is) creating perspective differences. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study tested the theory that advances on theory-of-mind tasks and on executive function tasks show a strong correlation because the typically used theory-of-mind tasks pose the same executive demands. In Experiment 1 with fifty-six 3- to 6-year-old children, performance on the dimensional change card-sorting task as an executive function task was correlated with performance on the usual false-belief prediction task, r = .65, and the false-belief explanation task, r = .65, as measures of theory-of-mind development. Because the explanation version of the false-belief test is supposed to be free of the alleged executive demands inherent in the prediction version, the equally strong correlation with the executive function task suggests that this correlation cannot be due to common executive demands. In Experiment 2, the basic finding of Experiment 1 was replicated on another sample of 73 children, ages 3 to 5.5 years. The need for new theories to explain the developmental link between theory of mind and executive function development is discussed, and some existing candidates are evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a well-established fact that adult women cry more frequently than adult men. However, in babies and young children no gender differences in crying frequency are found. Frey (1985) has postulated that boys and girls start to diverge in crying with the onset of menses in girls. The aim of the present study was to examine gender differences in crying during adolescence and the role of menarche and empathy. Participants were 216 boys and 265 girls, age 11 to 16, who completed questionnaires on crying frequency, crying proneness, empathy, and (for girls only) menarche. It appeared that girls cried more frequently and were more prone to cry than boys in all age groups. Gender differences increased with age mainly because of a decrease in crying among boys. Onset of menstruation did not have an effect on the crying measures. Empathy, on the other hand, was strongly associated with crying. Older girls were more empathic than younger girls, whereas for boys the relationship between empathy and age was weaker. It can be concluded that gender differences in crying develop before age 11 and that menarche does not play a significant role in crying in girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested the prediction that there is a direct developmental link between understanding false belief, understanding that reflex movements are not intentional actions and the ability to inhibit interfering action tendencies. The common ability consists of the understanding of mental states as representations with causal efficacy (Perner, 1991). One false belief task, the knee-jerk reflex task and two executive function tasks (Dimensional Change Card Sorting Test and hand game) were given to 69 children aged 3, 4 and 5 years old. The results showed that the relationship between false belief and executive control tasks also extends to children's understanding of reflex movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on an article by William Frawley which compares implicit and explicit representation and intra-modula and inter-modular processing in computer science. Illustration of predication implicitness-explicitness; Factual explicitness in inter-modular communication; Discussion of language processing.

Presents a study which explored the possible ways of saving the explicit-knowledge-only hypothesis with regards to children's understanding of false belief in action. Aspect of implicit knowledge; Effect of timing and condition on responses in the false belief story; Comparison of spontaneous and prompted responses in each condition.

This study investigated whether mothers facilitate false belief understanding, and if so, what strategies are particularly relevant. The mothers of 64 3- and 4-year-olds were given questionnaires eliciting information about mother's education, mother's occupation, number of younger and older siblings, the time the child spends with mother, and about how mothers deal with five disciplinary situations with their child. Three variables were positively correlated with belief understanding: age, number of older siblings, and number of times mothers said they would respond to the disciplinary situations by asking the child to reflect on the victim's feelings (How Feel responses). These three variables had an independent effect on belief understanding because each was significant after accounting for the influence due to the other two variables. In contrast, there was no significant positive relation between belief understanding and mothers who engaged their child in general discussion and exploration of the disciplinary issues, or who simply reprimanded the child without discussing the situation. The effects for number of older siblings and How Feel responses remained even after the influence due to the child's age, verbal mental age, time spent with the mother, and number of younger siblings was accounted for. The results are consistent with recent research showing that parent-child relations may be important for theory of mind understanding. More importantly, they provide insight into a specific strategy by which parents may help children learn about mental states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on a theory which implies the implicit-explicit distinction as applied to knowledge representation. Details on the representational theory of knowledge; Comments on the theory; Response to the comments.

A method is presented for deciding whether correct predictions about other people are based on simulation or theory use. The differentiating power of this method was assessed with cognitive estimation biases (e.g. estimating the area of Brazil) in two variations. Experiments 1 and 2 operated with the influence of response scales of different length. Experiment 3 used the difference between free estimates that tended to be far off the true value and estimates constrained by an appropriate response scale, where estimates became greatly more realistic. The critical question is how well observer subjects can predict these target biases under two different presentation conditions. Response scale biases (Experiments 1 and 2) were more strongly predicted when observer subjects were presented with the two scales juxtaposed, than when responses for each scale were given independently. This speaks for the use of a theory, since simulation should, if there is any difference at all, be made more difficult by the juxtaposition of conditions. The difference between free and constrained estimations (Experiment 3) was more strongly predicted under independent than under juxtaposed presentation. This speaks for the use of simulation since use of a theory should, if anything, be helped by juxtaposition of problems since it helps highlight the theoretically relevant factor. Results are discussed in view of recent proposals about when simulation is likely to be used, i.e. for belief fixation but not action prediction (Stich and Nichols, 1995b), for content fixation (Heal, 1996a), and for rational effects only (Heal, 1996b). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the relation between family size and "theory of mind." Results from an experiment with 3- and 4-year-olds showed that children from larger families were better able than children from smaller families to predict a story character's mistaken (false-belief based) action. Results from a second experiment on children with exactly 1 sibling failed to show any superiority of older over younger siblings in promoting earlier understanding of belief. The data are interpreted as suggesting that sibling interaction provides a rich "data base" for building a theory of mind, and this is discussed in relation to other studies showing that particular kinds of interaction between sibling and child, or caregiver and child, have a beneficial effect on the understanding of false belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines children's understanding of the role of covariation evidence in hypothesis formation. Understanding of how evidence would lead a story character to form a hypothesis different from the original one; Sufficient development of the metacognitive abilities of children aged six years.

Explores the autistic child's theory of mind. Child's understanding of a mistaken belief; Ability of child to infer knowledge about the content of a container from having or not having looked inside; Difficulty of autistic child in taking account of mental states.

Presents a study on the belief understanding of children. What results show; Indepth look at younger siblings versus the older ones; Indepth look at a linear increase in understanding false beliefs with the number of older siblings; Results and discussion.

• Dual labelling and theory of mind phenomena undergo contemporaneous development. • Mental files provide a cognitive representational theory explaining this development. • Encompasses understanding of belief, dual labelling, identity and conceptual pacts. We use mental files theory to provide an integral theory of children's diverse dual naming problems and why these problems are overcome when children pass the false belief test. When an object is encountered under different appearances or given different verbal labels, two distinct representations (mental files) may be deployed for that single object. The resulting files refer to the same object but capture different perspectives on the object. Such coreferential files can thus be used to represent people's differing perspectives (e.g., belief). Typically the existence of different files indicates the existence of two separate objects. To mark that only a single object is involved, coreferential files need to be linked. Development of the ability to link files provides a powerful developmental explanation for success on dual labelling and perspective tasks at the same age, around 4 years: processing identity statements, overcoming mutual exclusivity (accepting different labels for an object), visual perspective taking, and understanding differences of belief. Mental files also provide a new framework for understanding conceptual pacts and their relation to mutual exclusivity in children and adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports that infants as young as 15 months have insight into whether a person acts on the basis of a mistaken view about the world The children develop an understanding of false belief around 4 years of age. This discrepancy touches on important issues. An understanding of false belief at 4 years of age suggests that this ability may be constructed in a cultural process tied to language acquisition. In contrast, competence at 15 months suggests that this ability is part of their purely biological inheritance. Children's understanding of false belief has hitherto been assessed using a verbal false-belief task in which the experimenter enacts stories.

We investigate the brain activations when identifying a newly encountered individual as being the same as a person previously perceived, a fundamental but seldom acknowledged process. In an identity condition, two faces had to be identified as the same person in contrast to a control condition, in which two faces had to be recognised as belonging to similar looking twins. Our results demonstrate an increase of neural activation in frontal as well as in parietal areas including the left inferior parietal lobe and the precuneus during identification. We introduce mental files theory to model this process as a linking of co-referential files and identify important connections to other domains in neurological and cognitive science (e.g., delusional misidentification syndromes, theory of mind). • Identification due to linking between co-referential representations. • Mental files provide an effective account on the cognitive architecture of the mind. • Left inferior parietal lobe and precuneus involved in linking of representations. • Linking as basis for meta-representational thinking (e.g., theory of mind). • Deficient linking process in delusional misidentifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence for infants' sensitivity to behavior being goal oriented leaves it open as to whether they see such behavior as being designed to lead to an external goal or whether they see it, in addition, as being directed by an internal representation of the goal. We point out the difficulty of finding possible criteria for how infants or children view this matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]