You share the following story with your 3-year-old daughter Carleigh and 4-year-old nephew Jaxon:

Question

This is Brenda. Brenda has a box.
This is Michelle. Michelle has a basket.
Brenda has a ball. She puts the ball into her box.

Brenda goes out for a walk.
Michelle takes the ball out of the box and puts it into the basket.
Now Brenda comes back. She wants to play with her ball. Where will she look for the ball?
Given what you know about false-belief tasks and theory of mind, how will Carleigh answer the question? Explain your answer. Will Jaxon's answer be the same? Explain.

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A good answer will be similar to the following:
In all false-belief tasks, like the one above, a situation is set up so that the child being tested has accurate information, but someone else does not. The child being tested knows that the ball is in the basket but Brenda, the girl in the story, believes that the ball is still in the box. Most 4-year-olds will correctly say that Brenda will look for the ball in the box. However, most 3-year-olds will say that she will look in the basket. Four-year-olds, like Jaxon, understand that Brenda's behavior is based on her beliefs, despite the fact that her beliefs are incorrect. Three-year-olds, like Carleigh, make the false-belief error: attributing their own knowledge of the ball's location to Brenda. They say that she will search in the correct location. By 4 years, children understand that their own and other people's behavior is based on their beliefs about events and situations, even when those beliefs are wrong.