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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.x10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x); Senju et al. 2009 Science 325, 883–885 (doi:10.1126/science.117617010.1126/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.

Do children and adults engage in spontaneous Theory of Mind (ToM)? Accumulating evidence from anticipatory looking (AL) studies suggests that they do. But a growing body of studies failed to replicate these original findings. This paper presents the first step of a large-scale multi-lab collaboration dedicated to testing the robustness of spontaneous ToM measures. It examines whether 18-27-month-olds and adults’ anticipatory looks distinguish between knowledgeable and ignorant agents. In a pre-registered study with toddlers [anticipated N = 440, 50% female] and adults [anticipated N = 360, 50% female] from diverse ethnic backgrounds, we found that [DESCRIBE RESULT AND EFFECT SIZE FOR MAIN CONFIRMATORY ANALYSIS]. This provides [SUPPORT/SOME SUPPORT/NO SUPPORT] for spontaneous, epistemic state-based action anticipation in an AL paradigm.

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.