Language and meta-representation in the development of false-belief understanding

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This project examines children's understanding of human action. For example, when do children understand that people sometimes act mistakenly on the basis of wrong information? To find out, children are told a story in which a boy leaves an object in one place and goes away. While he's gone the object is moved to another place, and later he comes back to look for it. Numerous studies have shown that about 4 years of age, children expect that the boy will look in the first location because that's where he thinks the object is. But 3-year-olds say the boy will look in the new location. They don't understand that beliefs guide actions and the boy has a "false belief" about the object's location. However, recently, using more indirect testing methods, psychologists have shown that babies and toddlers have some "implicit" understanding of false belief. For example, babies are surprised and look longer at a video scene when a person with a false belief searches in the new location. And when toddlers are prompted to anticipate the search of a person with a false belief, their eyes glance towards the old location where the person thinks it is.