The Paradox of False Belief Understanding

Implications of pretend play for Theory of Mind research

“…There is no such disruption in the implicit FBT (Rubio-Fernández, 2013;Rubio-Fernández & Geurts, 2013). See also Wolf (2021) for further discussion of the effects of situational factors on task performance and how this can be further tested). 14 This interpretation also partially underlies Southgate's (2020) recent account that children are able to pass implicit FBTs before the age of 3 because at this point they are altercentric, which is to say that they are biased towards tracking the perspective of the other person over their own.…”

“…Therefore, one might argue that in recognising pretence in someone else, the child comes to track the perspective of another person which differs from their own. However, this view risks confusing two distinctions the child needs to draw: firstly, a distinction between pretence and reality and, secondly, a distinction between their own perspective and that of another person (see also Wolf 2021). While recognising pretence in another person clearly does require the distinction between pretence and reality, it does not also provide evidence that the child is keeping separate their own perspective and that of the other person.…”

“…11 If young children's pretend play does show that they are able to deal with inconsistent representations at 18 months, then the question we are faced with is why children seem to be able to deal with inconsistent representations in some context and not others. My suggestion to this is that the problem lies not in generating inconsistent representations, but rather in being able to manage and use these appropriately (see also Wolf 2021). This appropriate use consists especially in being able to consistently access the information or contents of these representations when needed.…”

“…This view would also cohere well with evidence from visual perspective taking indicating that children are able to take the perspective of another person at as young as 2.5 years, but only develop the ability to be able to contrast that perspective with their own at age 4 (Moll, Meltzoff, Merzsch, & Tomasello, 2013;Moll & Tomasello, 2012). Specifically, in these tasks children struggled if the task was such that it required them to switch from their own perspective to that of the other person, which may be because if the child's own perspective is made salient, they then struggle to consistently use the perspective of the other person and access the relevant information (Wolf, 2021). Plausibly, it is easier to relate different perspectives with each other or even make use of them simultaneously when they are not directly in conflict or inconsistent with each other, thereby allowing children to demonstrate factive ToM before non-factive ToM.…”