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Theory of Mind Is Contagious: You Catch It from Your Sibs

Author(s): Josef Perner, Ted Ruffman and Susan R. Leekam


Source: Child Development, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Aug., 1994), pp. 1228-1238
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1131316
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Theory of Mind Is Contagious:


from Your Sibs

You Catch It

Josef Perner and Ted Ruffman


University of Sussex at Brighton

Susan R. Leekam
University of Kent at Canterbury
R. Theoryof Mind Is Contagious: You Catch It
SUSAN
PERNER,
TED;and LEEKAM,
JOSEF;RUFFMAN,
1994, 65, 1228-1238. This study investigated the relation
from Your Sibs. CHILDDEVELOPMENT,
between family size and "theory of mind." Results from an experiment with 3- and 4-year-olds
showed that children from larger families were better able than children from smaller families
to predict a story character'smistaken (false-belief based) action. Results from a second experiment on children with exactly 1 sibling failed to show any superiority of older over younger
siblings in promoting earlier understanding of belief. The data are interpreted as suggesting
that sibling interaction provides a rich "database" for building a theory of mind, and this is discussed in relation to other studies showing that particularkinds of interaction between sibling and child, or caregiver and child, have a beneficial effect on the understanding of false
belief.

In recent years much research has been


devoted to tracing the developmental course
of children's understanding of the mind.
This research has tended to focus on the normative question of what children understand about mental concepts at different
ages, and in so doing sheds some light on
the structure of the conceptual system that
the child acquires. One very influential view
about the type of conceptual structure that
is acquired is that children acquire a theory
of mind. One should point out that the term
"theory of mind" is used by some to emphasize that the child has a coherent body of
knowledge that goes beyond the immediately perceptible and which provides predictive power (Premack & Woodruff, 1978;
Sellars, 1956) without any implication of
how such a theory might be acquired. And
some go even so far as to suggest that it is
not really acquired at all but that it is innate
(Fodor, 1987) or that its essential substrate
emerges through maturation (Leslie, 1987).
Most developmental theorists who subscribe to the theory view, however, find it
attractive to view intellectual development
as a process of theory acquisition exactly because it promises an explanation of how genuinely new conceptual systems can be ac-

quired. They look at children as acquiring


new ways of thinking in an essentially similar (albeit more guided) way to that in which
scientists develop their theories (Carey,
1985, 1988; Gopnik, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith,
1988; Keil, 1989; Kitcher, 1988; Perner,
1991; Wellman, 1990). This research then
gives important insights on the type of conceptual structure the child is acquiring, but
as yet there is little research on the origin
of and driving force behind this acquisition
process and the individual differences to
which this process gives rise.
In science, one thing is fairly clear; new
theories and insights do not simply mature
but need hard work and devotion. Only scientists who immerse themselves in creating
and contemplating relevant data are likely to
make significant contributions to their field.
Obsession, in the sense of a perhaps inextricable web of high motivation and great expertise, pays, or as Einstein once remarked,
"Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration." So, if children's understanding of
the mind develops along similar principles,
one would expect that children, who live in
an environment with greater incentive and
opportunity to benefit from an advanced theory of mind, will develop such a theory more

Requests for reprints should be directed to the first authorat the following address: Experimental Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QG, England.
1994,65, 1228-1238.? 1994bytheSocietyforResearchin ChildDevelopment,Inc.
[ChildDevelopment,
All rightsreserved.0009-3920/94/6504-0003$01.00]

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Perner, Ruffman, and Leekam


quickly than children with less of such an
opportunity. What might such an environment be?

1229

misinformation) about the world creates


something (a representation) in the mind
which governs the person's actions in the
of
real world. And it does so
Dunn's (e.g., 1984, chap. 3, 1988) work whether or not it is an accurateregardless
reflection of
has shown that it is mostly in their interac- the world, because it functions as a repretion with siblings that children around the sentation of the world. Since it is hard to see
age of 2 and 3 years have their most inten- how false belief can be understood without
sive social experience. It is in those situadeveloping such a, at least tacit, representations that they are most creative in their play tional
theory of mind, the false belief test
(Dunn & Dale, 1984). Sibling conflicts also seems to be a good indicator of a substantial
tend to elicit the most maternal talk about intellectual
step in children's understanding
feeling states (Dunn, Bretherton, & Munn, of the mind.
1987) and moral issues which elicit much
In contrast, a superficially similar quesexplicit reflection on motives, intentions,
and knowledge. Consequently, we might ex- tion that has to do, for example, with knowpect that children who have siblings to work ing where an object is when it has been
and play with should have a noticeable ad- moved, can be answered on the basis of a
vantage over only children who are stuck simple rule, namely, that informational acwith their parents as their only source of so- cess (e.g., seeing) leads to knowing and that
without such informational access a person
cial entertainment.
does not know where something is. Because
We tested this prediction by investigat- this relatively simple rule is sufficient, coring whether the number of siblings does rect answers to this knowledge question do
have a beneficial effect on the age at which not reflect as deep an understanding of the
children show an understanding of false mind as those to the belief question about
belief (Wimmer & Perner, 1983; Perner, where the mistaken person will look for the
Leekam, & Wimmer, 1987), since such un- object (Perner, 1991, chaps. 7 and 8). Indeed
derstanding marks an important step in it has been found that 3-4-year-old chilchildren's acquisition of a theory of mind dren's ability to answer the knowledge ques(Astington, Harris, & Olson, 1988; Perner, tion fluctuates much more with changes in
1991; Wellman, 1990). Understanding of experimental procedure (Hogrefe, Wimmer,
false belief takes such a central position in & Perner, 1986; Pillow, 1989; Pratt & Brythe development of "children's theory of ant, 1990) than is typical for belief questions.
mind" because it requires understanding of
In our first experiment we use both
several features that markthe mind as a representational system (Flavell, 1988; Forgu- types of question, but for the reasons just
son & Gopnik, 1988; Perner, 1991; Wellman, outlined we will rely in the data analysis
1990). For instance it requires understand- more on children's responses to the belief
ing of the conditions under which a belief is question than answers to the knowledge
formed, for example, if a person does not see question. We expect children with siblings
(or get other information) that an object is to do better on the belief question than only
moved to a new location then that person's children because interaction with siblings
mental representation of the object's loca- provides a more intensive data base and motion remains unchanged. As a consequence tivation for developing a representational
the person has a misrepresentationof where theory of mind.
the object is. To understand this children
have to be able to represent not only the. Experiment 1
world as it is not (object in the old location)
but also to appreciate that the mistaken per- Method
Subjects.--Eighty children from one
son takes this (mis)representationas a represchool in Brighton, England, aged 3
nursery
sentation of where the object really is and,
1 month to 4 years, 9 months (34 girls
years,
even
in
the
will
look
therefore,
wrong place
and 46 boys) participatedin this experiment.
though he wants to go where it really is.
They came from a predominantly white,
One can intuitively see that it would be working- and middle-class social backdifficult to explain how a false belief is ground. All children spoke English as their
formed and why it leads its holder to look in first language. We were unable to obtain
the wrong place without going into a "repre- data on family size for two children, whose
sentational theory" of how the mind works. test datawere therefore omitted from further
In the case of false belief, information (or analysis. In two cases, two children from the

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1230

Child Development

same family had been tested. To avoid statis- Results and Discussion
tical problems of nonindependence one of
The dependent variable of main interest
the children in each case was dropped from is the proportion of children giving correct
the study at random. Of the remaining 76 answers to the belief question. The indepenchildren, 22 were only children, 42 came dent variables were age, sex, family size,
from a family of two children (18 had an memory questions (mean number of correct
older sibling, 23 a younger sibling, and one answers to the four questions), and origin of
had a twin), 11 came from a family of three belief (unexpected change vs. misinforma(four were second born, six were third born, tion stories). Table 1 shows the means, stanand one had an older sibling and a twin), dard deviations, and intercorrelations (df =
and one was the last of a family of four. The 74) for all independent variables (except the
number of siblings was not known to the ex- experimentally manipulated variable). The
effect of the independent variables was
perimenter when testing each child.
by logistic regression (BMDP LR,
Procedure and material.-Each child analyzed
Dixon et al., 1981) specifying the model
was told a false-belief story enacted with
*sex* family-size*memory-questions*bedolls in two model rooms. For half the chil- "age
where age, family size, and
dren it was an Unexpected Change story as lief-origin,"
were specified as interval
memory-question
introduced by Wimmer and Perner (1983) variables. Terms were introduced
according
about Max who helps his mother unpack the to the
following considerations. Using the
shopping bag. In the story, Max puts the hierarchical rule, interaction effects were
chocolate into a particular cupboard and considered
only after all component effects
goes to play. In his absence his mother were already in the model. The constant
needs some of the chocolate and then puts term of the
was in the
it into a different cupboard. In the meantime model at theregression equation
Since the theoretibeginning.
Max gets hungry on the playground and
interesting factors could be partly conwants some chocolate. Children are asked cally
founded with age, which has a known effect
two test questions, one about Max's knowl- on belief
understanding, we first introduced
edge about the chocolate's location (Knowl- age into the model and then checked which
edge Question), "Does Max know where the of the other effects if added to the model
chocolate is or does he not know where it would reduce the error variance
by a sigis?" and then one about Max's belief-based nificant amount. The effect of
was sigage
will
Max
action (Belief Question), "Where
N = 76) = 11.14, p < .001.
nificant,
X2(1,
look for the chocolate?"
After age had been introduced into the
Each subject's answer to the belief model the only other significant effect was
question was immediately followed by a se- family size, X2(N = 76) = 3.99, p < .05.
ries of Memory Questions assessing his or
The two significant main effects reflect
her understanding of the basic story facts:
an increase in the proportion of children
who gave correct answers to the belief ques1. Is it in there?(If no, Whereis it?)
2. Rememberat the beginning,where did tion with age and with family size. Figure 1
shows these increases (in rough approximaMaxput the chocolate?
3. Rememberwhen mothermoved the choco- tion for the age effect by grouping children
late?Wheredid she put it?
into two age groups). Also included are plots
4. Did Maxsee her put it there?
of false belief performancepredicted by the
regression equations for age and size.
For the other half of the children, the story
The magnitude of the improvement
involved Misinformation. On the playwith
family size is quite impressive, considhis
brother
Max
is
Sam,
joined by
ground
who asks him where the chocolate is. Max ering that its magnitude almost matches the
tells him what he mistakenly thinks, namely, improvement with age from young 3- to
that it is where he put it. Children are then older 4-year-olds. In other words, the benefit
asked the same test questions, but about children get from interacting with two sibSam ratherthan Max,and the MemoryQues- lings rather than none is worth about as
tion 2 is changed to: "Remember when Max much as 1 year of experience, which at this
talked to Sam on the playground?Where did young age is considerable, namely, onefourth of the young child's entire life.
Max say that the chocolate was?"
Further detail about materials and the
To investigate further the role of sibverbatim version of the stories can be found lings, we asked whether it makes any difference whether the siblings are older or
in Perner and Wimmer (1988).

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Perner, Ruffman, and Leekam

1231

TABLE 1
MEANS,

STANDARD DEVIATIONS, AND INTERCORRELATIONS


VARIABLES IN EXPERIMENT 1

BETWEEN

PREDICTOR

CORRELATION WITH
VARIABLES

VARIABLE
Age ....................................

Sex .....................................
Family size .......................
Control question ..............
NOTE.-N

RANGE MEAN SD
3.1-4.7

1-2
1-4
0-4

3.9

.47

1.42
1.88
3.60

.50
.69
.73

Age
...

- .07
.06
.54

Sex
- .07

...
-.06
-.06

Family Size
.06

-.06
.08

= 76.

younger than the subject because Light


(1979, p. 76) reported that children with an
older sibling do better on role-taking measures than children with a younger sibling.
Indeed, there is an indication that older siblings are more of a help. Firstborns of two
gave fewer correct responses (56.5%, n =
23) than second borns (66.7%,n = 18), and
second borns of three were less well off
(50.0%, n = 4) than third borns (85.7%, n =

6, including one fourth born of four). There


were no firstbornof three at the age investigated. To test this potential effect of birth
order, we contrasted performance by children with only older siblings (i.e., second
borns of two, third borns of three, and the
one fourth born of four; 70.8% correct, n =

25) with that by children with only younger


siblings (i.e., firstbornsof two, 56.5%correct,
n = 23). This difference was, however, not
statistically significant, )2(1, N = 47) = 1.04,

p > .30.

Taking children's performance on the


false belief question as an indication of their
understanding of false belief is premised on
the assumption that they understand the
story details. Their degree of understanding
is assessed by answers to the battery of four

memory questions. Children's performance


on these questions was remarkably good
with a mean of 3.60 correct answers, and
only seven 3-year-olds and one 4-year-old
gave more than one wrong answer. Most of

100

80

60

DataFrom

cM
o

Regression

040

0-

Raw Data

20

3
n=38

4
n=38

Age Group

0
n=22

1
n=42

2-3
n=12

Numberof Siblings

FIG. 1.-Percent children giving correct answer to the belief question in Experiment 1, according
to age and family size. Three-year-olds:mean = 3-6; 4-year-olds:mean = 4-4; regression equation for
age: Y = 1.78x - 6.66; regression equation for size: Y = .74x - 1.11.

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1232

Child Development

the errors (84%) were committed in about


equal portions on questions 2 and 4.
To the degree that there were problems
with the memory questions this raises the
possibility that the observed correlation between family size and answers to the false
belief question is mediated by failure to understand story facts. To protect our interpretation of results against this possibility we
repeated the original logistic regression for
family size on answers to the belief question, but with both age, X2(1,N = 76) = 9.55,

p < .01, and control questions, X2(1,N =


76) = .27, p > .60, as independent variables
forced into the model. Family size still accounted for a significant amount of variance,
X2(1,n = 76) = 4.14, p < .05, in false belief
understanding.
The same logistic regression used for
the belief question was carried out on responses to the knowledge question. Only
age was a significant factor,X2(1,N = 76) =
12.49, p < .001, which can be approximately
illustrated by the mean correct responses in
the three age groups. Correctresponses rose
from 62.5% among young 3-year-olds, to
72.4% among old 3-year-olds, to 100%
among 4-year-olds.
In sum, the important result of this experiment is the effect of family size on children's understanding of false belief. In the
next experiment we investigate further the
reasons for this effect in terms of sibling's
age.

Experiment 2

consistently lower than that of their elder


siblings: because they did not have anybody
younger to teach. The prediction from this
hypothesis is that younger siblings should
be more beneficial than older siblings. In
Experiment 1, however, there was little support for this.
A third possibility is that siblings are
beneficial because they provide more opportunity for interaction in relevant activities.
From this it follows that older as well as
younger siblings provide comparable benefits as long as they are not too distant in age.
For neither a newborn baby nor a much
older sibling (who would be more like another parent) provide much opportunity to
engage in intensive joint play activities.
To test these different possibilities we
looked only at children with one sibling.
Children were told stories in which a doll
was led to a false belief about the contents
of a box. The doll saw one object inside the
box. Then, in the doll's absence, the object
was removed fromthe box and replaced with
a different object. The doll then returned,
and either children were asked what she
would think was inside the box (before the
doll had a chance to look inside), or the doll
looked inside and children were asked what
she had thought was inside prior to looking.
We examined how different age relations between sibling and child affect their
ability to answer this question. We analyzed
for effects of sibling's age, of distance in age
(absolute difference between sibling's and
child's age), and of whether the sibling is
older or younger than the child.
Method
Subjects.-All 43 children from three
nurseries and the reception class of a primary school who had exactly one sibling
were included in this study. The nurseries
and school were in a largely white, workingand lower middle-class neighborhood of
Brighton.All children spoke English as their
first language. The ages of their siblings
ranged from 7 months to 19 years with a

Several possibilities come to mind concerning why siblings may have a beneficial
effect on children's development of a theory
of mind, which all relate to the age difference between child and sibling. One possibility is that siblings teach, or pass on in
some other way, relevant knowledge. In this
case we would expect that older siblings
should have a much more pronounced effect
than younger siblings. As mentioned before,
Light's (1979) findings support this expecta- mean age of 41/2years (SD = 31/2years). The
tion, and there was some indication of a possibling was an extreme outlier,
sible difference in the results of our first 419-year-old
SDs away from the mean. This sibling was
experiment, although not a statistically sig- also very distant in age from the next oldest
nificant one.
sibling of 11 years (1.8 SDs away from the
A second possibility is that siblings pro- mean). Since such outliers can exert undue
vide an opportunity for a child to sharpen influence on the statistical analysis we
his or her understandingby teaching the sib- dropped the child with the oldest sibling
lings. In fact, this possibility has been used from our sample. The ages of the remaining
by Zajonc and Markus(1975) to explain why 23 girls and 19 boys ranged from 3-2 to 5-9
the IQ of last borns has been found to be (mean 4-10); 15 of them had older and 27

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Perner, Ruffman, and Leekam


younger siblings. At the time of testing, the
experimenter was not aware of the age of
subjects' siblings.
Materials.-A doll named "Katy" (33
cm tall) was used to represent the story character. There were six pairs of materials (one
pair per story): (a) spoon, bandaid; (b) pencil, sock; (c) keys, paper; (d) rock, matches;
(e) cup, envelope; and (f) twig, Q-tip. One
of the objects from each pair was placed in
a box (11 x 11 x 11 cm).
Procedure.-To begin with, the experimenter introduced children to the doll
named Katy and asked them to pretend she
was a real person "just like you and me."
The experimenter explained that Katy visited her grandmother every week and that
each time she liked to bring her something.
Each week Katy could take either of two
items (see the "Materials" section above).
The experimenter instructed the child to
place one of the items inside the box. Katy
then looked inside the box, and the experimenter assured children that she saw what
was inside. Katythen left to go to the "playground" (was put in a bag out of the child's
view), and the experimenter explained that
"Katy can't see us when she is in the playground." The child then removed the first
object from the box and replaced it with the
other object. To ensure that children understood Katyhad not seen this transferthe experimenter then asked, "Did Katysee us put
the (second object) inside the box?" Katy
then returned. Each child was told six stories of this kind. In three stories the experimenter asked children the Belief question
before Katy had a chance to look inside:
"Whatdoes Katythink is in the box?" In the
other three stories the sequence of events
was the same except that Katy discovered
the new object in the box before the experimenter asked the Belief question: "Whatdid
Katy think was in the box when she was in
the playground?" In all six stories children
were asked a memory question about the actual contents of the box after they were
asked the Belief question: "What's in the
box?"
Stories were presented in four random
orders. The pairs of materials were assigned
to each story on a random basis.
Results
Children's answers to the memory questions were perfect. The pattern of performance on the test question over the six stories was strongly bimodal: 11 children gave
all wrong answers, 3 children gave one cor-

1233

rect answer, no children gave 2 or 3 correct


answers, 1 child gave 4 and 2 children gave
5, and 25 gave all correct answers. It
seemed, therefore, appropriate to classify
children into two groups-those who understood false belief (4 or more correct answers)
and those who failed to understand (1 or 0
correct)-and use this classification as the
dependent variable rather than the number
of correct responses. The independent variables were: age, sex, sibling's age, distance
in age (absolute value of sibling's age minus
subject's age), and the interaction between
the latter two factors. Table 2 shows the
means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations for these predictor variables. Their
effect on the dependent variable was analyzed by logistic regression (BMDP LR:
Dixon et al., 1981).
Factors were introduced according to
the same rationale as in Experiment 1. The
first factor introduced was age which was
significant, X2(1, N = 42) = 15.22, p < .001.

The size of the effect is roughly reflected


by the improvement from 43% of children
passing false belief in the youngest third (3-2
to 4-6), to 67% in the middle third (4-7 to
5-3), to finally 92% among the oldest third
(5-4 to 5-9). No other effect was significant
after age had been introduced, nor, in supplementary analyses, were there any significant effects before age had been partialed out. In particular, none of the
theoretically interesting child-sibling relations was significant: sibling's age, X2(1,N
= 42) = 0.26, p > .60, difference in age,
X2(1,N = 42) = 0.05, p > .80, or the interac-

tion between sibling's age and difference in


age, x2(1, N = 42) = 0.05, p > .80. We also

checked whether there was a difference between children with an older and those with
a younger sibling, but there was no difference apparent: 10 of the 15 (two-thirds)children with older siblings and 18 of the 27
(two-thirds) children with younger siblings
passed false belief.
These results confirm the negative finding in the previous experiment that the age
of a child's sibling does not seem to matter.
The present results, furthermore, suggest
that closeness in age between sibling and
child does not matter much either (at least
not within a range of about 7 years).
General Discussion
The main finding of these experiments
is that the number of siblings in a family is
related positively to young children's rea-

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1234

Child Development
TABLE 2
BETWEEN PREDICTOR
MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS, AND INTERCORRELATIONS
VARIABLESIN EXPERIMENT2
CORRELATION WITH
VARIABLES

VARIABLE

RANGE MEAN SD

Age .................................. 3.2-5.7


Sex ..................................... 1-2
Sibling's age .................... .58-11
Distance in age ................. .58-6.8

4.8
1.55
4.11
2.72

.72
.50
2.89
1.10

Age

Sex

Sibling's
Age

...

.05

.05
.14
.08

...

.14
.14

.14
.18

.28

NOTE.-N = 42. Ages are being expressed in years, correctto the firstdecimal place.

soning in theory of mind tasks. These results


are particularlyinteresting in view of recent
findings by Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski,
Tesla, and Youngblade (1991) who reported
that measures of the interaction between
second-born children, their mothers, and
older siblings at 33 months correlated with
these children's ability to use false belief in
explaining behavior at 40 months.

the sibling. The important point is that the


general precocity of these children could
also be directly responsible for their earlier
onset of belief reasoning, rather than their
more frequent, earlier social experiences.
The present results complement the
study by Dunn et al. because they help firm
up the causal interpretation of relations between early interaction and later belief reasoning. The causal interpretationis strengthened because the pattern of results we
obtained for birth order and false belief understanding are quite different from how
birth order affects IQ (Belmont & Marolla,
1973; Zajonc & Markus, 1975). One of the
clearest effects pertaining to IQ is that last
borns have lower IQs than earlier borns. In
contrast, with false belief understanding
there was no such difference. In Experiment
2 second borns of two were as good (twothirds passed false belief) as firstborns(twothirds passed), and in Experiment 1 there
was actually a trend in the opposite direction. Second borns of two were slightly better (66.7%)than firstborns(56.5%),and from
families of three the third borns were better
(83.3%)than the second borns (50.0%).This
makes it difficult to argue that the sibling
effects we have documented in this study
are confounded with cognitive maturity.
Also, in response to an earlier version of this
paper, Jenkins and Astington (personal communication) looked at their existing data
from 68 3-5-year-olds for an effect of family
size on belief understanding. Their preliminary analysis showed that family size was
correlated with false belief understanding
even after a general measure of language
competence had been partialed out.

The study by Dunn et al. and our study


complement each other in an importantway
because the pattern of correlations in the
study by Dunn et al. suggests which kind of
interaction between child, sibling, and
mother may be responsible for our observed
effect. In particular the set of correlations
reported in the lower half of their table 3
(Dunn et al., 1991, p. 1361) showed a relevant, distinct pattern of specific correlations
between later belief understanding and
types of earlier interactions. From the large
set of possible correlations only two were
clearly and significantly different from zero:
(1) the amount of control mother exerted on
the sibling and (2) the child's attempts to
interact cooperatively with the sibling.
It is tempting to interpret these correlations causally, that is, one is inclined to assume that the earlier patterns of interaction
help the child to acquire an understanding
of belief more quickly. However, as Dunn et
al. warn us, one needs to be cautious about
causal interpretationof correlationaldata. In
fact, individual differences in intellectual
and/or social maturity could account for the
correlations. For instance, generally more
precocious children may interactmore cooperatively with their siblings, on the one
hand, but, on the other hand, when someTo the degree that our data do support
thing goes wrong they may be more able to
make it appearthat their sibling was at fault, the intuitively plausible causal interpretawhich might lead mother to exert control on tion of the data by Dunn et al., they pose a

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Perner, Ruffman, and Leekam


serious problem for nativist proposals and
various developmental explanations relying
on internal maturation.For instance, Fodor
(1987) made the strong nativist claim that a
theory of mind is innate and that the observed developmental improvements on various tasks are due to increased informationprocessing abilities (Fodor, 1992). This
proposal is difficult to maintain in view of
our and Astington and Jenkin's data since
family size seems to affect belief reasoning
specifically and not information-processing
abilities in general. One should, however,
mention that the data are compatible with
Fodor's (1981) earlier, less radical claims
about the innateness of concepts where he
allowed experience to play a necessary role
in "triggering concepts." Within this framework the number of siblings could be seen
as providing the necessary experiences for
triggering concepts like false belief.
The data also speak against so called
neo-Piagetian theories that explain developmental progression as a maturational increase in central processing capacity (Pascual-Leone, 1970). Our data are, however,
not so clearly incompatible with Case's
(1985) revision of this theory, which he used
to explain developmental advances on theory of mind tasks (Case, 1989). Although
Case shares with Pascual-Leone the assumption of limited processing capacity, he
admits of two ways in which this limitation
can progressively be overcome. One way is
through an increase in processing speed due
to neurological maturation; the other way,
however, is through increased efficiency
due to practice. So Case could argue that the
effect of family size is due to greater social
practice in sibling interaction which increases the efficiency of social reasoning
strategies.
For similar reasons our data fail to rule
out (though they may contradict in spirit)
Leslie's (1987; Leslie & Roth, 1993) proposal that the necessary computational
mechanism for a theory of mind matures
around the age of 11/2 years, since he does
not commit himself as to what factors may
effect the subsequent improvements in the
workings of this basic mechanism.

1235

cently applied to theory of mind experiments (Lewis & Osborne, 1990; Siegal &
Beattie, 1991). The criticism was that Piagetian tests do not accurately assess what
they purportto assess, namely, the development of certain concepts. Rather,they assess
young children's growing sensitivity to communicative intentions in their interaction
with an adult experimenter asking strange
questions.
To assimilate our findings the sociolinguistic criticism theorists need to explain
why increased interaction with siblings
helps children to better understand adults'
communicative intentions. If this challenge
can be met the interesting prediction follows
that family size should affect performanceon
various Piagetian tasks (e.g., conservation
tasks), to which the sociolinguistic criticism
has been applied, in a similar way to that
in which it affects performance on the false
belief task.

On the more positive side, the finding


that siblings help develop a theory of mind
is compatible with the sociocognitive tradition of Vygotsky (1965), Doise (1985), and
Perret-Clermont(1980), who emphasize intellectual progress as a function of social interaction among peers and view intellectual
growth as a process of internalizing the
knowledge already incorporated in the social interaction. However, we did not find a
consistent superiority of children with older
over younger siblings. Although it is possible that this result was due to a lack of statistical power, our result may pose a problem
for the usual assumption in sibling interaction studies of this kind that interaction with
an intellectually slightly advanced partneris
optimal. The data gathered by Jenkins and
Astington underline this potential problem.
They obtained a slightly negative partialcorrelation between birth order and false belief
understandingafter the effects of family size
(with which birth order tends to be positively correlated) had been partialed out.
However, this apparent discrepancy between peer interaction studies and our family-size effects (and lack of birth-order effects) can be resolved by pointing out that
the effect of family size may be mediated by
parents' intervention in sibling interaction
The data also pose a certain challenge (Dunn et al., 1991) and it may matter little
for the sociolinguistic criticisms originally whether the sibling is older or younger,
leveled against Piaget's conservation experi- while in peer interaction studies children
ments by Rose and Blank (1974) and Don- gain from their interaction directly but only
aldson (1978; McCarrigle & Donaldson, from a more experienced partner.
1974-1975), later extended to egocentrism
Our results may also throw light on why
studies (Hughes & Donaldson, 1979) and re-

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1236

Child Development

traditional attempts to train theory of mind


concepts like the appearance-realitydistinction (Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1986, study
3) have met with failure. One interesting
reason why family size may have a more pervasive and reliable effect than the teaching
methods employed by Flavell et al. and the
peer interaction engendered in laboratory
studies, may be that family size provides a
naturallearning environment with a density
of learning experience unattainableby a laboratory study. For this reason we suggest
that gathering data of this kind, in particular,
using the fine-grained approach adopted by
Dunn et al. (1991) might be a good way to
provide details about the important factors
involved in the acquisition of a "theory of
mind."

prerequisite for understanding false belief


(Harris,1991, in support of the simulation or
role-taking view; Leslie, 1987, and Perner,
1991, in support of the theory formation
view). Belief and pretence are conceptually
very closely related because both lead to acting-as-if (e.g., both Max pretending and Max

thinking the chocolate is in the [actually


empty] cupboard lead him to look in that
cupboard, i.e., act as if the chocolate were
in there; Perner, Baker, & Hutton, in press).
Furthermore,as Dunn and Dale (1984) suggest, children do engage more frequently in
creative social role taking with siblings than
with anybody else. And since a benefit can
be gained from joint pretence with a
younger as well as with an older sibling, pretend play is perhaps our best candidate for
a cooperative activity which furthers the
Here are but some speculations about eventual understanding of false belief.
which early activities between siblings may
Finally we need to point out why it is
especially stimulate false belief understanding. One candidate is deception because it so importantto study the socially facilitating
involves the manipulation of belief. How- factors for developing a theory of mind and,
ever, our finding that there was no advantage in particular,understanding of false belief.
of having an older over having a younger Its importanceis clearly illustrated by Chansibling poses a problem. The problem arises dler, Fritz, and Hala's (1991) reportthat indisince only children who already understand vidual differences in understandingfalse befalse belief tend to deceive (LaFreniere, lief covary with parents' and teachers'
1988; Peskin, 1992; Russell, Mauthner, ratings of social and interpersonal maturity.
Sharpe, & Tidswell, 1991; Sodian, 1991; And one can see why such a relation should
Stouthamer-Loeber, 1986; Wimmer & Per- exist. As mentioned above, understanding of
ner, 1983). Claims that deception occurs be- false belief is of central importance for defore understanding of false belief (Chandler, ception, which is an important skill to acFritz, & Hala, 1989; Hala, Chandler, & Fritz, quire if the child does not want to become
1991) have met with methodological criti- an easy victim for her more malevolent
cism and replication difficulties (Doherty, peers. It is also essential for importantmoral
1992; Ruffman,Olson, Ash, & Keenan, 1993; distinctions such as that between mistakes
Sodian, Taylor, Harris, & Perner, 1991). and lies, a grasp of which is achieved in the
Hence a child who does not understandfalse wake of understanding false belief (Wimbelief and does not engage in deceitful ac- mer, Gruber, & Perner, 1984). And undertions is unlikely to be confronted with de- standing of higher-order mental states (e.g.,
ceptive actions by an even younger, less of second-orderbeliefs, i.e., of what a person
able sibling. Only older siblings who are al- thinks someone else thinks) is involved in
ready able to deceive will provide opportu- the distinguishing of various speech acts
(Perner, 1988), such as distinguishing lies
nities to learn from deception.
from jokes (Leekam, 1991) and deception
Moreover, the finding by Dunn et al. from irony (Winner& Leekam, 1991). It may
(1991) that false belief understanding corre- also be part of a deeper understanding of
lates specifically with the child's attempts to social commitment (Mant & Perner, 1988).
interact cooperatively with the sibling, but Because of the impact that the understandnot with competitive interactions, also ing of false belief has on such a variety of
makes it unlikely that sibling deception is socially relevant distinctions, the study of
a crucial factor. Fortunately, there are also social factors helping the child to acquire
cooperative activities that very young chil- such an understanding is crucial.
dren engage in and that provide a plausible
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