Theoretical explanations of children's understanding of the mind

This is a state-of-the-art review of children's understanding of the mind. It examines both empirical evidence and explanatory theories. Considering evidence, the key issue of children's understanding of false belief is first discussed. Then other evidence for children's folk psychological understanding is summarized, from late infancy to the end of the preschool period. Considering explanations, the dominant idea in the field, the ‘heory theory’, is discussed first. Then five other perspectives are considered: enculturation, nativism, folk psychology based on procedural knowledge, on experience, or on scripts. The positions, and the empirical predictions each would make, are compared. The paper concludes with a synthesis of the different views and a brief consideration of where the field is headed.