World of Psychology

Mental-State Reasoning Is Universal Milestone in Child Development

A major social-cognitive achievement of young children is the understanding that other people act on the basis of their own representations of reality rather than on the basis of reality itself. Developmental psychologists have explored the refinement of mental-state reasoning in children, typically by measuring their ability to pass false-belief tasks, such as the example above. Yet previous research has only been conducted in Western cultures, where children pass such tests around the age of 5. New research reveals that children reach this false-belief milestone at about the same age the world over.


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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 28 Jul 2005

 


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