Dr Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann | How do children come to understand others and themselves as thinking agents in the world?

From very early on in life, other individuals play a central role in infants' perception of the world. Their attention and processing of their environment is guided by social cues, such as gaze or communication, they are impressive learners in social context, and they make sophisticated predictions about others' behavior from their first year of life. Not only do they predict others' actions, but even their own behavior and expectations of the physical world seem to be modulated by others (e.g., Kovacs et al., 2010, Science). It is not before the age of 4 years, however, that children are traditionally thought to begin to reason about others' minds. In our research group we ask when and how young children come to understand others and themselves as thinking agents in the world.

The traditional account that Theory of Mind develops late, relies on language, and is uniquely human has been questioned by novel, non-verbal Theory of Mind tasks that already preverbal infants pass. Our research indicates that these early Theory of Mind abilities rely on different cognitive and neural processes than the later verbal Theory of Mind reasoning. We study which processes underly infants' early sensitivity to others' mind, how their own perception and memory of their environment is influenced by others, and how they come to develop a mature verbal understanding of their own and others' mental states.