The DOI matches its Crossref record; 90 of the 92 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind."
Abstract
One of the major developments of the second year of human life is the emergence of the ability to pretend. A child's knowledge of a real situation is apparently contradicted and distorted by pretense. If, as generally assumed, the child is just beginning to construct a system for internally representing such knowledge, why is this system of representation not undermined by its use in both comprehend ing and producing pretense? In this article I present a theoretical analysis of the representational mechanism underlying this ability. This mechanism extends the power of the infant's existing capac-ity for (primary) representation, creating a capacity for metarepresentation. It is this, developing toward the end of infancy, that underlies the child's new abilities to pretend and to understand pretense in others. There is a striking isomorphism between the three fundamental forms of pretend play and three crucial logical properties of mental stale expressions in language. This isomorphism points to a common underlying form of internal representation that is here called metarepresenta-tion. A performance model, the decoupler, is outlined embodying ideas about how an infant might compute the complex function postulated to underlie pretend play. This model also reveals pretense as an early manifestation of the ability to understand mental states. Aspects of later preschool development, both normal and abnormal, are discussed in the light of the new model. This
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Moreover, more theoretically sophisticated accounts of pretense have tended to interpret pretend play as an epiphenomenon of other abilities, such as metarepresentation or theory of mind, rather than as an activity that could shape learning or development (Baron-Cohen, 1995;Currie, 1995;Leslie, 1987;Lillard, 2001;Nichols & Stich, 2000).”
From Pretense and possibility—A theoretical proposal about the effects of pretend play on development: Comment on Lillard et al. (2013). (2013) · cites this paper as Leslie, 1987
In the citing paper
“In PP, this primary representation (real‐world mental model) is raised to a second‐order representation or metarepresentation (mental model of the pretend world).”
From A plausible role of imagination in pretend play, counterfactual reasoning, and executive functions (2023) · cites this paper as Leslie, 1987
In the citing paper
“Both PP and CFR theorists make clear that alternative representations are imaginary representations derived from real‐world premises.”
From A plausible role of imagination in pretend play, counterfactual reasoning, and executive functions (2023) · cites this paper as Leslie (1987)
In the citing paper
“Childhood play also builds enduring intellectual resources by increasing levels of creativity (Sherrod & Singer, 1989), creating theory of mind (Leslie, 1987), and fueling brain development (Panksepp, 1998).”
From The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. (2001) · cites this paper as Leslie, 1987
In the citing paper
“Being playful, for instance, can build physical resources (Boulton & Smith, 1992), social resources (Aron, Norman, Aron, McKenna, & Heyman, 2000;Lee, 1983), and intellectual resources (Leslie, 1987;Panksepp, 1998).”
From The Undoing Effect of Positive Emotions (2000) · cites this paper as Leslie, 1987
Citations
Cites
Searle, J. R. (1969) · doi:10.1017/cbo9781139173438 · Cited by 11,718
(1943) · The Nervous child · Cited by 8,870
Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?
Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x00076512 · Cited by 8,743
Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind” ?
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/0010-0277(85)90022-8 · Cited by 8,599 · cited 6×
“Where will the hider look for the chocolate? This simple test can be easily administered to young children and even to mentally retarded groups (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialSelf-citationDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed
Cooper, A. M., & Michels, R. (1981) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/ajp.138.1.128 · Cited by 7,419
Foxman, D., & Bateson, G. (1973) · The Western Political Quarterly · doi:10.2307/446833 · Cited by 7,263
Wimmer, H. (1983) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/0010-0277(83)90004-5 · Cited by 6,305
Play, Dreams And Imitation In Childhood
Piaget, J. (2013) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9781315009698 · Cited by 5,404
Fodor, J. A. (1975) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 4,588
Smith, T. L., & Chomsky, N. (1982) · The Philosophical Review · doi:10.2307/2184681 · Cited by 2,800
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.218 · Cited by 18,025
Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?
Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2000) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x00003435 · Cited by 4,481
The broaden–and–build theory of positive emotions
Fredrickson, B. L. (2004) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2004.1512 · Cited by 4,214
Baron-Cohen, S., & Wheelwright, S. (2004) · Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders · doi:10.1023/b:jadd.0000022607.19833.00 · Cited by 4,093
Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment
Bottom, W. P., Gilovich, T. D., Griffin, D., & Kahneman, D. J. (2004) · Academy of Management Review · doi:10.2307/20159081 · Cited by 3,583
Metadata
- Authors
- Leslie, A. M.
- Affiliations
- Medical Research Council (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Leslie, Alan M.
- ORCID
- Leslie, Alan M.
- Venue
- Psychological Review
- Published
- 1987-10
- Volume
- 94
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 412-426
- ISSN
- 0033-295X (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1471
- OpenAlex
- W2113669408
- Semantic Scholar
- 1aca0588fb5cf8d512548b4b15d48f1c9de2396d
- Cited by
- 3,379
- References
- 92
- Citations by year
- 2026: 65 · 2025: 92 · 2024: 105 · 2023: 80 · 2022: 110 · 2021: 116 · 2020: 153 · 2019: 110 · 2018: 89 · 2017: 65 · 2016: 86 · 2015: 107 · 2014: 99 · 2013: 142 · 2012: 123
- FWCI
- 36.65
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Review (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Representations and Identity
- Keywords
- theory of mind, pretense, pretend play, metarepresentation, internal representations, infant cognitive development, preschool development, abnormal development
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind.". https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037/0033-295x.94.4.412
- The paper
- Leslie, A. M. (1987). Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind.". Psychological Review. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.94.4.412
