Citation

Leekam S, Perner J, Healey L, Sewell C. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 2008; 26(4): 485-497.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, British Psychological Society)

DOI

10.1348/026151007X260154

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

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.

Language: en