Mentalizing abilities emerge by eight months and sharpen in toddlers

Evidence

By the age of roughly eight months, infants in at least some societies have developed an ability to infer intentions and goals and to recognize who likely has knowledge and who does not. Infants, for example, will copy a model’s goals or intentions, such as grasping a toy, even when the model fails to achieve his goal, but they won’t copy unintentional actions that create the same physical results. By the time they are toddling, children are already making sophisticated judgments about others’ mental states, for example, recognizing that a potential model mislabeled a familiar object and then subsequently devaluing what that model has to say. Similarly, toddlers can figure out what aspects of context are new for their model and use this to better target their learning, even when those same aspects are familiar to the learner. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, 189

Categorization

• QUESTION: This gives the early developmental anchor for social-learning biases; the reader will want whether conformist bias specifically follows this same early timeline.
• XREF: This gives the early developmental anchor for social-learning biases; the reader will want whether conformist bias specifically follows this same early timeline. — connects to: Infants evolved to elicit parental attribution of intentionality — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 415; Joint attention emerges in infants around nine months through triadic gaze-following — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 71; Mind reading competence is learned through cultural scaffolding from birth — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 431 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Joint attention emerges in infants around nine months through triadic gaze-following #corroborates (0.82) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 71
• Mind reading competence is learned through cultural scaffolding from birth #qualifies (0.75) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 431
• Toddlers distinguish deliberate choices from forced actions when imitating #expands (0.74) — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 948
• Infants evolved to elicit parental attribution of intentionality #qualifies (0.72) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 415
• Cognitive development yields positive outcomes like fairness and perspective-taking #expands (0.71) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2005