Can processing demands explain toddlers’ performance in false-belief tasks?

Abstract

Two-and-a-half-year-olds normally fail standard false-belief tasks. In the classic version, children have to say where a protagonist will look for an apple that, unbeknownst to her, was moved to a new location. Children under 4 generally predict that the protagonist will look for her apple in its current location, rather than where she left it. Setoh, Scott, and Baillargeon (1) argue that young children fail standard false-belief tasks because of their high processing demands, not because young children lack the necessary theory of mind.