The Social Sense: Susceptibility to Others’ Beliefs in Human Infants and Adults

Abstract

Mind Reading One core component of social cognition, especially of the kind practiced by humans, is the capacity to formulate a representation of what someone else believes to be true, even if that belief is not anchored in reality. Holding two such beliefs in mind—one false and one true—is no simple feat, and up until a few years ago, it was generally accepted that such a capacity did not arise until children were 3 to 4 years old. Since then, a flurry of studies, using a variety of interrogation measures, has suggested that much-younger humans might, in fact, possess this capacity, commonly referred to as a theory of mind. Kovács et al. (p. 1830 ) devised an ingenious behavioral paradigm and applied it both to adults and to infants, which suggests that the representations of others' beliefs are indeed formed in the same way in adults and in infants.