Children′s Memory for Actions Based on a False Belief

Abstract

In four investigations, 3- and 4-year-olds were asked to recall their own or another person′s actions, as well as acknowledge the false belief upon which the action was based. Recalling that somebody else went to a wrong location was easier than acknowledging that that person had a false belief. Similarly, children could recall the wrong location where they themselves had searched, but still made realist errors in answer to a belief question. The results suggest that behavioral clues in the form of actions do not help children to reason to false belief, for either self or other, but on the other hand, neither do children misrecall their own inappropriate actions in the same way as they misrecall their own false utterances.