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Science 8 April 2005:
Vol. 308. no. 5719, pp. 214 - 216
DOI: 10.1126/science.1111656
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Perspectives

PSYCHOLOGY:
Infants' Insight into the Mind: How Deep?

Josef Perner and Ted Ruffman

Understanding that others may act based on false beliefs is considered a uniquely human ability. Children are thought to develop an understanding of false beliefs around 4 years of age, which implicates a tie to a cultural process involving language. However, as Perner and Ruffman discuss in their Perspective, a new study (Onishi and Baillargeon) suggests that infants as young as 15 months may have insight into whether a person acts on the basis of a mistaken view (false belief) about the world. Perner and Ruffman argue that the behavior of 15-month olds in this study does not mean that they necessarily understand belief.

J. Perner is in the Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria. T. Ruffman is in the Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. E-mail: josef.perner{at}sbg.ac.at; tedr{at}psy.otago.ac.nz

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Getting back to the rough ground: deception and 'social living'.
V. Reddy (2007)
Phil Trans R Soc B 362, 621-637
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