Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as "Gettier cases." Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers' intuitions about these cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief.

Recent advancements in the field of infant false-belief reasoning have brought into question whether performance on implicit and explicit measures of false belief is driven by the same level of representational understanding. The success of infants on implicit measures has also raised doubt over the role that language development plays in the development of false-belief reasoning. In the current paper, we argue that children's performance on disparate measures cannot be used to infer similarities in understanding across different age groups. Instead, we argue that development must continue to occur between the periods when children can reason implicitly and then explicitly about false belief. We then propose mechanisms by which language associated with false-belief tasks facilitates this transition by assisting with both the processes of elicited response selection and the formation of metarepresentational understanding.

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Inclusive education provides learning opportunities for children with disabilities in regular settings with other children. Despite the prevalence of inclusive education, few qualitative studies have adequately explored young children's perspectives on inclusion. This paper reviews the findings of a preliminary qualitative study where play-based interviews were conducted with 12 typically developing children enrolled in one of two childcare lab schools. Study methods provided an opportunity to assess play-based interview techniques where young children were asked to describe their views on inclusive education. The findings demonstrate that play-based methods allow young children of various ages to identify complex issues related to inclusion. The authors call for additional research that examines research methods in early childhood settings on multi-faceted issues regarding educational policies and practices as a way to attenuate young children's lack of participation in curriculum development.