Mentalizing in first-time fathers: reflective functioning as a mediator between attachment representation and sensitivity.

Sensitivity in parent-child interaction is essential for child development. Since fathers are increasingly involved in childrearing, identifying factors leading to paternal sensitivity is crucial. We examined the relation between attachment representation and reflective functioning (RF) as factors influencing paternal sensitivity in a longitudinal study including N = 40 first-time fathers (Mage = 33) and their 6-month-old children. We used the Adult Attachment Interview during pregnancy to assess paternal attachment representation and general RF, the Parental Development Interview to assess fathers' parental RF, and the Emotional Availability Scale to measure sensitivity at child's age of 6 month. Data show that secure paternal attachment representation, high general and parental RF are associated with higher levels of paternal sensitivity. Further, parental RF mediates the association between attachment representation and paternal sensitivity. These findings contribute to the identification of a causal interplay in that they suggest an explanatory effect of RF on the association between fathers' attachment representation, and sensitivity.

Mistaken max befriends Duplo girl: No difference between a standard and an acted-out false belief task.

With their Duplo task, Rubio-Fernández and Geurts (2013) challenged the assumption that children under 4 years of age cannot pass the standard false belief test. In an attempt to replicate this task on a sample of 73 children aged 32-51 months, we added a standard change of location false belief task as well as a Duplo true belief task. Performance on the latter is crucial for interpreting answers in the Duplo false belief task as to whether they reflect evidence for understanding or merely exhibit a difference in guessing rate. We found (a) a greater variability of response types in both Duplo tasks, (b) no evidence that responses in the Duplo tasks reveal earlier competence than those in the standard false belief test, and (c) a reassuring correlation between false belief tasks, suggesting that the Duplo task does pick up understanding of belief in light of the standard test.

The practical other: teleology and its development.

We argue for teleology as a description of the way in which we ordinarily understand others' intentional actions. Teleology starts from the close resemblance between the reasoning involved in understanding others' actions and one's own practical reasoning involved in deciding what to do. We carve out teleology's distinctive features more sharply by comparing it to its three main competitors: theory theory, simulation theory, and rationality theory. The plausibility of teleology as our way of understanding others is underlined by developmental data in its favour.

Helping as an early indicator of a theory of mind: Mentalism or Teleology?

This article challenges the claim that young children's helping responses in Buttelmann, Carpenter, and Tomasello's (2009) task are based on ascribing a false belief to a mistaken agent. In our first Study 18- to 32-month old children (N = 28) were more likely to help find a toy in the false belief than in the true belief condition. In Study 2, with 54 children of the same age, we assessed the authors' mentalist interpretation of this result against an alternative teleological interpretation that does not make the assumption of belief ascription. The data speak in favor of our alternative. Children's social competency is based more on inferences about what is likely to happen in a particular situation and on objective reasons for action than on inferences about agents' mental states. We also discuss the need for testing serious alternative interpretations of claims about early belief understanding.

Competition as rational action: why young children cannot appreciate competitive games.

Understanding rational actions requires perspective taking both with respect to means and with respect to objectives. This study addresses the question of whether the two kinds of perspective taking develop simultaneously or in sequence. It is argued that evidence from competitive behavior is best suited for settling this issue. A total of 71 kindergarten children between 3 and 5 years of age participated in a competitive game of dice and were tested on two traditional false belief stories as well as on several control tasks (verbal intelligence, inhibitory control, and working memory). The frequency of competitive poaching moves in the game correlated with correct predictions of mistaken actions in the false belief task. Hierarchical linear regression after controlling for age and control variables showed that false belief understanding significantly predicted the amount of poaching moves. The results speak for an interrelated development of the capacity for "instrumental" and "telic" perspective taking. They are discussed in the light of teleology as opposed to theory use and simulation.

The robustness and generalizability of findings on spontaneous false belief sensitivity: a replication attempt.

Influential studies showed that 25-month-olds and neurotypical adults take an agent's false belief into account in their anticipatory looking patterns (Southgate et al. 2007 Psychol. Sci.18, 587-592 (doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x); Senju et al. 2009 Science325, 883-885 (doi:10.1126/science.1176170)). These findings constitute central pillars of current accounts distinguishing between implicit and explicit Theory of Mind. In our first experiment, which initially included a replication as well as two manipulations, we failed to replicate the original finding in 2- to 3-year-olds (N = 48). Therefore, we ran a second experiment with the sole purpose of seeing whether the effect can be found in an independent, tightly controlled, sufficiently powered and preregistered replication study. This replication attempt failed again in a sample of 25-month-olds (N = 78), but was successful in a sample of adults (N = 115). In all samples, a surprisingly high number of participants did not correctly anticipate the agent's action during the familiarization phase. This led to massive exclusion rates when adhering to the criteria of the original studies and strongly limits the interpretability of findings from the test phase. We discuss both the reliability of our replication attempts as well as the replicability of non-verbal anticipatory looking paradigms of implicit false belief sensitivity, in general.