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Updated: May 24, 2026

Problem-Solving Before Instruction (PS-I): A Protocol for Assessment and Intervention in Students with Different Abilities
Published on: September 11, 2021
Sociocultural input facilitates children's developing understanding of extraordinary minds
Jonathan D Lane1, Henry M Wellman, E Margaret Evans
1Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. jonlane@umich.edu
Abstract:
Three- to 5-year-old (N = 61) religiously schooled preschoolers received theory-of-mind (ToM) tasks about the mental states of ordinary humans and agents with exceptional perceptual or mental capacities. Consistent with an anthropomorphism hypothesis, children beginning to appreciate limitations of human minds (e.g., ignorance) attributed those limits to God. Only 5-year-olds differentiated between humans' fallible minds and God's less fallible mind. Unlike secularly schooled children, religiously schooled 4-year-olds did appreciate another agent's less fallible mental abilities when instructed and reminded about those abilities. Among children who understood ordinary humans' mental fallibilities, knowledge of God predicted attributions of correct epistemic states to extraordinary agents. Results suggest that, at a certain point in ToM development, sociocultural input can facilitate an appreciation for extraordinary minds.
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