Abstract: It is widely believed that what distinguishes the social cognition of humans from that of other animals is the belief-desire psychology of four-year-old children and adults (so-called theory of mind). We argue here that this is actually the second ontogenetic step in uniquely human social cognition. The first step is one year old children’s understanding of persons as intentional agents, which enables skills of cultural learning and shared intentionality. This initial step is ‘the real thing ’ in the sense that it enables young children to participate in cultural activities using shared, perspectival symbols with a conventional/normative/reflective dimension—for example, linguistic communication and pretend play—thus inaugurating children’s understanding of things mental. Understanding beliefs and participating in collective intentionality at four years of age—enabling the comprehension of such things as money and marriage—results from several years of engagement with other persons in perspective-shifting and reflective discourse containing propositional attitude constructions. By all appearances, the cognitive skills of human beings are very different from those of other animal species, including our nearest primate relatives. Human

The mechanism by which humans perceive others differs greatly from how humans perceive inanimate objects. Unlike inanimate objects, humans have the distinct property of being “like me ” in the eyes of the observer. This allows us to use the same systems that process knowledge about self-performed actions, self-conceived thoughts, and self-experienced emotions to understand actions, thoughts, and emotions in others. The authors propose that internal simulation mechanisms, such as the mirror neuron system, are necessary for normal development of recognition, imitation, theory of mind, empathy, and language. Additionally, the authors suggest that dysfunctional simulation mechanisms may underlie the social and communicative deficits seen in individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

ABSTRACT—In two experiments, we investigated whether 13-month-old infants expect agents to behave in a way that is consistent with information to which they have been exposed. Infants watched animations in which an animal was either provided information or prevented from gathering information about the actual location of an object. The animal then searched successfully or failed to retrieve the object. Infants ’ looking times suggest that they expected searches to be effective when—and only when—the agent had had access to the relevant information. This result supports the view that infants possess an incipient metarepresentational ability that permits them to attribute beliefs to agents. We discuss the viability of more conservative explanations and the relation between this early ability and later forms of theory of mind that appear only after children have become experienced verbal communicators. Current accounts of the conceptual competence underlying infants’ understanding of agents have emphasized infants ’ ability to represent the goal of an action (Gergely & Csibra, 2003), as well as agents ’ internal source of energy (Leslie, 1994; Luo & Baillargeon, 2005). By their first birthday, infants distinguish agents from inanimate objects (Mandler, 2004), interpret behaviors as goal directed (Baldwin & Baird, 2001; Gergely, Nádasdy,

Children engage in pretend play from around 18 months of age, rarely confusing their “pretend ” world with the “real ” world. It has been recently suggested that various social cues and behavioural regularities presented by parents during their own pretend play enhance the ability of children to quarantine pretend acts from real acts. However, a question that has received little empirical investigation is the possibility that children, like their parents, convey that their actions are “only pretend ” through producing particular social cues during symbolic play. The aim in this paper was therefore to identify if children convey social cues differently depending on whether they are engaged in functional or pretend play. The present study also sought to explore whether or not children’s “pretend ” social cues vary when their pretence is spontaneously generated or when they are imitating an experimenter. To address these aims, fifty-two children aged from 26 to 43 months of age were videotaped engaging in free-play before and after an adult modelled a series of pretend scenarios. Play bouts were categorized as pretend or functional, and post-modelling pretend play was further categorized as being either

useful comments on earlier drafts of this article and the staff at the DPSS, University of Padua, the parents and infants for their kind help. Attribution of beliefs by 13-month-olds 2 In two experiments, we investigated whether 13-month-old infants expect agents to behave in a way consistent with information to which they have been exposed. Infants watched animations in which an animal was either provided information or prevented from gathering information about the actual location of an object. The animal then searched successfully or failed to retrieve it. Infants’ looking times suggest that they expected searches to be effective when—and only when—the agent had had access to the relevant information. This result supports the view that infants ’ possess an incipient metarepresentational ability that permits them to attribute beliefs to agents. We discuss the viability of more conservative explanations and the relationship between this early ability and later forms of ‘theory of mind ’ that appear only after children have become experienced verbal communicators. Attribution of beliefs by 13-month-olds 3

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