The DOI matches its Crossref record; 185 of the 187 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Psychological Reasoning in Infancy
Open accessAbstract
Adults routinely make sense of others' actions by inferring the mental states that underlie these actions. Over the past two decades, developmental researchers have made significant advances in understanding the origins of this ability in infancy. This evidence indicates that when infants observe an agent act in a simple scene, they infer the agent's mental states and then use these mental states, together with a principle of rationality (and its corollaries of efficiency and consistency), to predict and interpret the agent's subsequent actions and to guide their own actions toward the agent. In this review, we first describe the initial demonstrations of infants' sensitivity to the efficiency and consistency principles. We then examine how infants identify novel entities as agents. Next, we summarize what is known about infants' ability to reason about agents' motivational, epistemic, and counterfactual states. Finally, we consider alternative interpretations of these findings and discuss the current controversy about the relation between implicit and explicit psychological reasoning.
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
“Humans have areas devoted to emotional processing, and the brain seems to embody prior knowledge about the structure of emotional expressions and how they relate to causes in the world: emotions should have specific types of strong couplings to various other higher-level variables such as goal-satisfaction, should be expressed through the face, and so on (Phillips et al., 2002; Skerry and Spelke,”
From Toward an integration of deep learning and neuroscience (2016) · cites this paper as Baillargeon et al., 2016
Citations
Cites
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 1×
“In a classic task (Baron-Cohen et al. 1985), children listened to a story enacted with props: Sally hid a marble in a basket and then left; in her absence, Anne moved the marble to a nearby box; Sally then returned, and children were asked where she would look for her marble.”
BackgroundWimmer, H. (1983) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/0010-0277(83)90004-5 · Cited by 6,305
Meta-Analysis of Theory-of-Mind Development: The Truth about False Belief
Wellman, H. M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00304 · Cited by 4,476
(1987) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 4,269
Conceptual Change in Childhood
Carey, S. E. (1985) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 3,851
Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind
(1995) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.33-2412 · Cited by 3,670
Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind
Baron-Cohen, S. (1995) · doi:10.7551/mitpress/4635.001.0001 · Cited by 3,428
Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age.
Carpenter, M., Nagell, K., Tomasello, M., Butterworth, G., & Moore, C. (1998) · Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development · doi:10.2307/1166214 · Cited by 2,727
Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs?
Onishi, K. H., & Baillargeon, R. (2005) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1107621 · Cited by 2,350
Understanding the intentions of others: Re-enactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children.
Meltzoff, A. N. (1995) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/0012-1649.31.5.838 · Cited by 2,087
Research works printed but not linked: 4
- Hyde DC, Aparicio Betancourt M, Simon CE. 2015. Human temporal-parietal junction automatically tracks other's beliefs: an fNIRS study. Hum. Brain Mapp. In press
- Jacob P, 2015, Mind and Society: Cognitive Science Meets the Social Sciences
- Keil FC, 1995, Causal Cognition, 234
- Perner J, 2010, Cognition and Neuropsychology: International Perspectives on Psychological Science, 241
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 201–260 of 260
ORIENTATION IN A SIGNAL FLOW AND INTELLIGENCE OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISTIC SPECTRUM DISORDERS
Nikolaeva, E. I., Gaidamakina, M., & Zavodovskaya, D. A. (2019) · SOCIETY INTEGRATION EDUCATION Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference · doi:10.17770/sie2019vol4.3894
Quasi-Factives and Cognitive Efficiency
Aspeitia, A. A. B., & Stainton, R. J. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108290593.006
The Korean Sentence-Final Suffixcias a Metarepresentational Marker
Noh, E.-J. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108290593.012
Evolutionary Mismatches in the Development of Today’s Children
Bjorklund, D. F. (2020) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190066864.003.0007
Bjorklund, D. F. (2020) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190066864.003.0003
Developing the Evolved Social Brain
Bjorklund, D. F. (2020) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190066864.003.0006
Bjorklund, D. F. (2020) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190066864.003.0004
Bjorklund, D. F. (2020) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190066864.003.0002
The Adaptive Value of Immaturity (or The Benefits of Being Young at Heart)
Bjorklund, D. F. (2020) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190066864.003.0005
Scott, K., Clark, B., & Carston, R. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108290593.025
Scott, K., Clark, B., & Carston, R. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108290593.026
Obedience to Authority: An Introduction for Healthcare Educators, Researchers, and ProfessionalsPreprint
Violato, E. M., & King, S. (2022) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3981839
Young, G. C. (2016) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-24094-7_37
(2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108290593.024
The Cultural and Developmental Niche of Religious Cognitions
Richert, R. A. (2022) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190693350.013.19
Bian, L., & Renée Baillargeon, B. (2017) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3307-1
Devine, R. T. (2020) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_560 · Cited by 1
(2021) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/13474.003.0021
Bian, L., & Renée Baillargeon, B. (2021) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_3307
Gómez, J. C. (2018) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1804-1
Implicit Computation and the Origins of KnowledgePreprint
Grace, R. C., Morton, N. J., Grice, M., Wilson, A. C., & Kemp, S. (2021) · PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/b7r3n
Bonnefon, J. (2017) · Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks · doi:10.1057/978-1-137-60049-3_4
The Puzzle of False-Belief Understanding
Schlicht, T. (2022) · Palgrave philosophy today · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-14491-2_8
Tabares, Á. S. G. (2023) · Journal for the Study of Education and Development Infancia y Aprendizaje · doi:10.1080/02103702.2023.2230044
Infants Infer And Predict Coherent Event Interactions: Modeling Cognitive DevelopmentPreprint
Theuer, J. K., Koch, N. N., Gumbsch, C., Elsner, B., & Butz, M. V. (2024) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/mqc9t
Bjorklund, D. F. (2020) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190066864.002.0004
Bjorklund, D. F. (2020) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190066864.002.0008
Bjorklund, D. F. (2020) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190066864.002.0007
Dubois-Sage, M., Mosset-Cancel, Y., Jamet, F., & Baratgin, J. (2025) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-84595-6_17
Early markers of atypical socio-moral development
Geraci, A., Borzì, E., & Franchin, L. (2025) · Frontiers in Developmental Psychology · doi:10.3389/fdpys.2025.1638327
Racine, T. P. (2025) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-70581-6_10-1
False belief attribution in toddlers: an exploratory study with a novel unexpected-identity task
Grazzani, I., Conte, E., & Datteri, E. (2026) · Frontiers in Developmental Psychology · doi:10.3389/fdpys.2026.1727052
The motoric theory of curiosity
Carruthers, P. (2026) · Mind & Language · doi:10.1111/mila.70017
Sodian, B., Schuwerk, T., Kristen, S., Kaltefleiter, L. J., Jarvers, I., & Wiesmann, C. G. (2022) · OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints)
Knowing before doing: Review and mega-analysis of action understanding in pre-reaching infantsPreprint
Almeida, M., & Liu, S. (2024) · OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints)
Infants Use Others’ Inconsistent Choices to Make Preference Attributions
Choi, Y., Putrich, R., vanMarle, K., & Luo, Y. (2026) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2026.106548
Ruffman, T., & Kong, Q. (2026) · European Journal of Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1080/17405629.2026.2683039
Development of clause chaining and interclausal semantics in Korean children
Choi, S. (2026) · Trends in language acquisition research · doi:10.1075/tilar.36.04cho
The Alluring Appeal of Minimal Mentalizing
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.003.0010
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.003.0015
If Teleology Is the Answer, What Was the Question?
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.003.0013
Philosophizing About Mentalizing
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.003.0002
Theory-Theory vs Simulation Theory
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.003.0007
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.002.0005
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.003.0014
Is There a Gulf Between Factive and Non-Factive Human Mentalizing?
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.003.0011
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.003.0004
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.003.0008
Reconciling the Discrepant Developmental Findings
Jacob, P. (2026) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.003.0005
Human Mentalizing: Its Scope and Limits
Jacob, P. (2026) · doi:10.1093/9780198901297.001.0001
Do infants attribute false beliefs to a visible agent with no visual access?
Poulin‐Dubois, D., & Goldman, E. J. (2026) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101745
Daniels, K. (2026) · Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood · doi:10.1177/14639491261461674
Mind the dog: real dogs elicit emotional and mental state language in parent-child conversations
Oppenheimer, N. E., Reider, L. B., & LoBue, V. (2026) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2026.106605
From one to many: Mapping the multiple facets of infants' social cognition
Choi, Y., Jin, K., Putrich, R., & Luo, Y. (2026) · Child Development Perspectives · doi:10.1093/cdpers/aadag018
Chimpanzees attribute agency to virtual animals, but not to self-propelled shapes
Munro, E. R., Allritz, M., Schweller, K., Dolins, F. L., Haun, D. B. M., & Call, J. (2026) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2026.1574
AGENT: A Benchmark for Core Psychological Reasoning
Shu, T., Bhandwaldar, A., Gan, C., Smith, K. A., Liu, S., Gutfreund, D., Spelke, E., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Ullman, T. D. (2021) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2102.12321 · Cited by 34
Metadata
- Authors
- Baillargeon, R., Scott, R. M., & Bian, L.
- Affiliations
- 1Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois 61820; email: rbaillar@illinois.edu, linbian2@illinois.edu
- University of California, Merced (US)
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- ORCID
- Bian, Lin
- Venue
- Annual Review of Psychology
- Publisher
- Annual Reviews
- Published
- 2016-01-04
- Volume
- 67
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 159-186
- ISSN
- 0066-4308 (ISSN-L)
- 1545-2085
- OpenAlex
- W1939519994
- Cited by
- 263
- References
- 187
- Citations by year
- 2026: 25 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 30 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 35 · 2019: 43 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 27 · 2016: 15
- FWCI
- 4.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- escholarship.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- Locations
- Annual Review of Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Keywords
- infant cognition, theory of mind, mental state inference, rationality principle, efficiency principle, consistency principle, agent identification, counterfactual reasoning, epistemic states, motivational states, social cognition development
- MeSH terms
- Child Development, Cognition, Concept Formation, Humans, Infant, Theory of Mind
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
