Talking about Minds: Social Experience, Pragmatic Development, and the False Belief Task

Evan Westra, University of Maryland

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Abstract

Nativists about theory of mind have typically explained why children below the age of four fail the false belief task by appealing to the demands that these tasks place on their developing executive abilities. However, this sort of account cannot explain a wide range of evidence that shows that social and linguistic factors also affect when children pass this task. Continue reading Talking about Minds: Social Experience, Pragmatic Development, and the False Belief Task