Mechanisms of belief-desire reasoning

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Understanding people and engaging in social interactions both depend on the ability to reason about beliefs, desires, and other mental states. For example, to understand why my friend is looking in the fridge, it will help if I recognize that she desires an orange, and that she believes that there are oranges in the fridge.    Young children often have difficulty reasoning about what other people believe. This difficulty is especially apparent when children reason about beliefs which differ from their own. The proposed research examines the cognitive systems that allow children to reason and learn about people's beliefs and desires. The proposed research will also examine how adults reason about beliefs and desires.    The focus of the proposed research will be our ability to control our thoughts about what other people believe and desire. This ability may be immature in younger children, leading them to have difficulty overcoming a tendency to assume that other people share their beliefs. The ability is better developed in older children, but may still be challenged in complicated situations.    Questions to be addressed by the proposed research will include: Are thoughts about beliefs and desires controlled by the same system(s) involved in controlling other types of thought? Are adults simply better than young children at reasoning about beliefs and desires, or are there other differences between how children and adults reason about mental states? Why are younger children so tempted to assume that others share their beliefs?    The proposed research will improve our understanding of how children reason and learn about what others think and want. The research may uncover surprising differences between how children and adults think. In the longer term, this research will increase our understanding of the challenges children face in social reasoning.