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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 5, 2025

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
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Infants Generalize Beliefs Across Individuals.

Kimberly Burnside1, Cassandra Neumann1, Diane Poulin-Dubois1

  • 1Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montréal, QC, Canada.

Frontiers in Psychology
|October 19, 2020
PubMed
Summary

Sixteen-month-old infants do not attribute person-specific beliefs, suggesting their implicit belief attribution mechanisms differ from explicit reasoning. This challenges sophisticated infant theory of mind (ToM) assumptions.

Keywords:
false beliefinfancytheory of mindtrue beliefviolation-of-expectation

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Development
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Infant Cognition

Background:

  • A mature theory of mind (ToM) involves understanding mental states as person-specific.
  • Previous research shows 9-month-olds do not generalize motivational states across agents.
  • It is unclear if infants perceive epistemic states (beliefs) as person-specific.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether 16-month-old infants perceive epistemic states as person-specific.
  • To examine infants' understanding of false beliefs using a novel paradigm.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized a switch agent paradigm combined with a false belief violation-of-expectation task.
  • Observed infant responses to assess their attribution of beliefs to a naïve agent.

Main Results:

  • Sixteen-month-old infants attributed both true and false beliefs to a naïve agent.
  • Infants did not appear to perceive beliefs as person-specific in this context.

Conclusions:

  • Infants' implicit attribution of beliefs may rely on different mechanisms than explicit belief reasoning.
  • Findings suggest a developmental distinction in how infants process motivational versus epistemic mental states.