Most developmentalists currently
believe that young children are not as egocentric as described by Piaget.
Instead, children develop an increasingly sophisticated "theory of mind"
throughout the preoperational period (2 - 7 years). That is, they
develop a better understanding of other people's mental functioning and
representational knowledge. Nonetheless, until about 4 years of age,
children have difficulty understanding that someone might hold a belief
that differs from a known state of reality. Watch this child demonstrate
the phenomenon. After discovering that the experimenter has hidden
pencils in an M&M candy bag, the child declares that his father will
already know that it contains pencils even though his dad has not yet seen
or opened the bag.
