Cognitive

Development,

9, 377-395

(1994)

Implicit

Understanding
Wendy

of Belief
A. Clements

University

of Sussex

Josef Perner
University
Max-Planck-Institute

Implicit
look
thinks
This

understanding

in anticipation

of false belief was investigated

of a protagonist

reappearing,

that his desired object is in a different

implicit

measure of understanding

to the experimenters
Children

question

Research,

by monitoring

was contrasted with childrens

about where the protagonist

of the children

Munich

mistakenly

place from the place where it really is.

explicit

answers

would look for the object.

looked at the objects

which they gave for their answer. From 2 years 11 months

about 90%

of Sussex

where children

when the protagonist

from 2 years 5 months to 2 years 10 months erroneously

real location,
months,

for Psychological

to 4 years 5

looked at the empty location where the protagonist

thought the object was.

In sharp contrast, only about 45%
as their explicit

of the children in this age span gave that location

answer to the experimenters

terms of a distinction

between representing

question.

These

results

are explained

a fact and making a judgment

in

about that

fact.

False belief is an important

concept for children to develop in their understanding of the mind. Explicit use of this concept develops around the age
of 4 years. In this study, we aim to demonstrate
a substantially
earlier, but
implicit, understanding
of belief.
The distinction
between
implicit and explicit knowledge
plays an increasingly important
role not only in cognitive development
but in cognitive science at large, despite the fact that no agreed meaning
of this
distinction
has yet emerged. Our use is primarily descriptive
and intuitive.
We illustrate
the distinction
with examples
from childrens
intellectual
development:
There are now several studies suggesting that implicit knowledge precedes explicit understanding.

We would like to thank the staff and children

of Fiveways Playgroup,
Lewes Road
Playgroup,
Meridian
County Primary School, and Pepperpot
Playgroup
for their friendly
cooperation.
Correspondence
and requests for reprints should be sent to Wendy A. Clements, Laboratory of Experimental
Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, BNl 9QG, England.
Manuscripts

received

January

12, 1994;

revision accepted

August 18, 1994

377

378

W.A.

Clements

and J. Perner

One important
source of evidence are findings that children learn to
perform particular
tasks before they can understand
and talk about what
they are doing. For instance, Karmiloff-Smith
(1986, 1992) argued that
linguistic knowledge
exists initially as an implicit procedure
for producing
correct sentences. Gradually, in steps of increasing
explicitation,
children
become able to make automatic
(and presumably
subconscious)
corrections to erroneous
productions
and eventually
become able to talk about
some of the rules used in correct production.
Similarly, young children frequently
fail to detect ambiguous
or inconsistent passages (Flavell, Speer, Green, & August, 1981; Harris, Kruithof,
Terwogt, & Visner, 1981; Lloyd & Pavlidis, 1978; Zabrucky & Ratner, 1986).
However, childrens
eye movements
while reading these passages were
affected by the ambiguities
and inconsistencies.
In the case of ambiguity,
they switched their gaze repeatedly
between potential referents (Lloyd &
Pavlidis, 1978) and had prolonged reaction times (Flavell et al., 1981), and
in the case of inconsistency
they looked back more often at the incongruent passages than at the congruent
ones (Zabrucky
& Ratner, 1986).
Another
source of evidence for earlier development
of implicit knowledge are studies looking at gesture-speech
mismatch. Church and GoldinMeadow
(1986) found that children
who failed to consider
in their
judgments
the nondominant
dimension
in Piagetian
liquid conservation
tasks (e.g., take only height of water column but not the width of vessel into
account) nevertheless
showed some awareness of this dimension
in their
gestures. Perry, Church, and Goldin-Meadow
(1988) reported an instance
when given the problem of finding the missing number in the equation: 5
+ 3 + 4 = _ + 4, children often erroneously
claimed the solution consisted
of adding all numbers on the left and then on the right of the equation sign.
Yet these childrens accompanying
pointing gestures often revealed the
correct strategy of adding only the numbers to the left of the equation sign
and then subtracting
the number on the right-hand
side (see Perry et al.,
1988, Tables 2 and 8).
In this study, we attempt
to gain evidence
for a period of implicit
understanding
of false belief that precedes the onset of explicit understanding.
Explicit
understanding
as traditionally
measured
develops
around 4 years old (e.g., Perner, Leekam, & Wimmer, 1987). In the typical
paradigm (Wimmer & Perner, 1983), a story protagonist
puts an object into
one of two locations. In the protagonists
absence, the object is unexpectedly moved to the second location. Before the protagonist
returns, children
are asked to indicate where they will look for the object.
Childrens
understanding
of false belief has recently
become an intensely researched
topic because belief is a central concept in adult beliefdesire psychology (folk psychology, common-sense
psychology)
(Wellman,
1990). Much of this research
effort has been directed
at showing that

implicit Understanding of Belief

379

children understand
belief well before the age of 4. Some of these claims
of earlier competence
(e.g., Lewis & Osborne,
1990), that a change in
question leads to more correct answers) are awaiting replication.
Others changed the task in order to demonstrate
earlier competence.
However,
when the task is changed, it often becomes unclear whether
successful performance
on that task demonstrates
understanding
of belief
or of some different, albeit closely related ability. For instance, Wellman
and Bartsch (1988) described the content of the false belief overtly and the
children had to predict how the protagonist
would act. Unfortunately,
it is
unclear whether it is necessary for correct predictions
to understand
the
described
belief as belief or just as a description
of a counterfactual
scenario (similar to pretend play) according to which the protagonist
is to act.
The same argument
also applies (e.g., Perner, Baker, & Hutton, 1994) to
studies in which the counterfactual
scenario is presented
directly through
the protagonist
acting in a way which does not accord with current reality
(Bartsch
& Wellman,
1989; Moses & Flavell, 1990) or through
verbal
misinformation
given to the protagonist
(Roth & Leslie, 1991). The traditional belief task is critically different from these changed versions in that
the counterfactual
scenario is not suggested to children but needs to be
inferred by them.
Hence, our present enterprise
is different from these existing variations
of the original false belief test in two ways. One difference is that we do not
change the task itself and, therefore, do not open up the possibility that the
childrens correct responses are based on a concept closely related to, but
not the same as belief. The second difference
is that we do not want to
demonstrate
earlier understanding
of the same kind (i.e., explicit) as measured in the original belief test, but demonstrate
understanding
at a different level (i.e., implicit).
To date all variations
of the original false belief test assess explicit
understanding
in the sense that children are asked a question
about the
protagonists
belief or action that they have to answer. In this study, we
develop a measure of implicit understanding
that does not depend on the
childrens
answering
a question.
Instead, their automatic
anticipation
of
story events is exploited. We simply recorded
where children looked in
anticipation
of the protagonist
reappearing.
To make this anticipatory
looking as clear as possible, the original story needed only minor changes.
The protagonists
(e.g., Sams mouses) movements
were largely invisible inside his dwellings (the mouses living quarters), except for possible
reappearances
at the extreme ends of the story display (mouse holes).
The protagonist
initially stored the object in a box in front of one of the
exits (Location
A). While he was asleep inside, the object was moved to
a box in front of the other exit (Location
B). When anticipating
the protagonists reappearance
at one of the exits, the children were forced to

W.A.

380

Clements

and J. Perner

look clearly one way or the other so that their direction of gaze could be
clearly classified on a video record of their behavior during the telling of
the story.
A true-belief
control condition
was also used in which the protagonist
witnesses the transfer of the desired object from one box to the other
before going to sleep. Without this control condition,
any spontaneous
looking to Location A in the experimental
false-belief condition would be
multiply interpretable;
for example, the children may look at Location A
because they are merely retracing with their eyes the sequence
of story
events. However, if the children look to A in the false-belief condition
but
not in the true-belief
condition, then their looking to A must be a sign that
they anticipate the protagonists
appearance
at A. This anticipation
can be
interpreted
as an-at
least implicit-understanding
of false belief.
In order to maximize the frequency of such anticipatory
looking to one
of the locations (A or B), the experimenter
said aloud, I wonder where
Sam is going to look? (Anticipation
Prompt), before asking the question
about where Sam would go (Action Prediction
Question).
If evidence for implicit understanding
is revealed, a further objective is
to investigate
whether the emergence
of this implicit understanding
is the
earliest
point at which explicit
understanding
can be demonstrated
through methodological
improvements.
As an example of such improvement, we used the method developed
by Siegal and Beattie (1991). By
adding the word first to the Action Prediction
question,
more of the
younger
children should answer with the objects original location. We
anticipate
that this technique
will be effective only for children who show
implicit understanding
of belief, following the claim by Goldin-Meadow,
Alibali, and Church (1993) that such children are in a transitional
knowledge state within which explicit understanding
can be trained.
In this
respect, they suggest that implicit understanding
marks the zone of proximal development
(Vygotsky, 1978) through which children can achieve
more with guidance than they can achieve alone. Outside of this zone, (i.e.,
for those children who either already demonstrate
explicit understanding,
or those who demonstrate
no understanding)
such methodological
aids
should have little effect.

METHOD
Subjects
Forty-four
children (28 girls and 16 boys) aged between
months (2;5) and four years six months (4;6), were tested
three play groups and one reception class in a predominantly
area of Brighton, England.

two years five

individually
at
middle-class

implicit

Understanding

of Belief

381

Design
Each child was tested in two different sessions about 7 days apart. On each
occasion two tasks were administered.
For one-half of the children, the
false-belief task was followed by the true-belief
(control) task, while for the
other half, the order of the tasks was reversed. For each task, a different
scenario
was used. The assignment
of scenario
(mouse vs. house) was
counterbalanced
with the order of presentation
of the tasks. In the second
session, the tasks were repeated
in reverse order of the first session. Although the house and the mouse scenario were used again, they were used
with different
story characters
and different
objects to be translocated.
Also, whichever scenario was used for a particular
task in the first session
it was used for the other task in the second session.
Moreover, for each child the word first was used at the end of the test
question in one of the false-belief
tasks and in one of the true-belief
tasks.
This change in the test question followed suggestions
from Siegal & Beattie (1991) that adding the word first makes the false-belief
task clearer
for the child. For half of the children, the word first was used in the two
stories of session one; for the other half, it was added to the two stories of
session two. The use of the word first in the first or second session was
counterbalanced
along with story order and assignment
of scenario.
Material and Procedure
Each child was seated in front of a table, on which lay a large 50 cm wide,
30 cm tall sheet of white cardboard. This sheet depicted one of two scenes.
In one scene (the mouse scene), a long V-shaped tunnel was depicted,
linking two mouse holes, 38 cm apart in the top corners of the cardboard
sheet. Below this was the mouses underground
living quarters. Only the
outer contours of tunnels and living quarters were visible, not their interior.
At each mouse hole, there was a 3 cm box, colored red at the left mouse
hole and blue at the other hole. The other scene consisted of a large house
with two balconies, 30 cm apart, one at the top set of doors and one at the
bottom set of doors. There was a 3 cm box, colored green at the top balcony
and blue at the bottom balcony.
A video camera was set up on the same side of the table as the experimenter was sitting. The camera faced the child so that the child was visible
from the waist up. The child was videotaped
throughout
the whole story.
From the record, it was possible to determine
which of the two colored
boxes the child glanced at during the critical point in the story.
The story began by introducing
the child to the 10 cm tall cardboard
cutouts of Sam and Katie mouse, the story protagonists.
Then the experimenter
narrated
the story, enacting
the story events on the cardboard
scenario. As a paradigm example of the stories used, we give the verbatim
false-belief
version of the mouse scenario:

W.A.

382

Clements

and J. Perner

Episode One:

This is Sam. One day Sam had some cheese for tea. When he looked there
was one piece of cheese left but he was too full up to eat it. I know, he said.
Ill put it in this blue box and I can eat it later. Sam gave a big yawn. Im so
tired now, he said. He went all the way down the tunnel and went to bed
where he fell fast asleep.
Having placed the cheese in the blue box, Location
down the tunnel, where he is not visible to the child.
Prompt Question

A, Sam disappears

1: Where is the cheese?

If the child answered

incorrectly,

the story was repeated;

story proceeded to the critical unexpected

from Location A to Location B.

otherwise,

the

transfer of the desired object

Episode Two:

When Sam had fallen fast asleep, Katie came back from playing outside. As
she walked past the blue box, she looked into it and saw the cheese. Oh
look! she said Someones left a piece of cheese in here. Ill put it in the red
box and I can eat it later for my tea.' So she picked up the cheese and walked,
fully visible, across the hill to the other mouse hole where she put the cheese
in the red box. Ill go and see my friend now she said.
Katie leaves the scene.
Prompt Question 2: Do you remember

where Sam put the cheese?

Prompt Question 3: Where is the cheese now?

Prompt Question 4: Did Sam see it being moved?

If the child answered any of these questions incorrectly, the story was
repeated. This was necessary in 10 cases. Three children (2;7,2;9, and 3;2
years-old) answered Prompt Question 1 wrong in one of the two false-belief stories. The story needed to be repeated twice for the youngest child
and once for each of the two older children before the question was
answered correctly. The youngest child, along with one other child (3;O)
also answered prompt question 4 incorrectly in one of the true-belief
stories. The story needed to be repeated twice for the youngest child and
once for the second child. Five children (aged 2;8,2;10,2;10,2;11, and 3;0,
respectively) answered Prompt Question 3 in one of their false-belief
stories wrongly. The story needed to be repeated once for the oldest two
subjects, twice for the youngest two, and thrice for the child in the middle.
One child (2;ll) answered prompt question 2 incorrectly in both of the

383

Implicit Understanding of Belief

true-belief
stories. The story had to be repeated
once on both occasions.
Four children had to be excluded from the study; three refused to sit long
enough to finish the first story; and one finished the first story but refused
to continue with the second one.
Episode

Three:

Later on, Sam woke up and gave a big stretch. I feel very hungry now, he
said. Ill go and get the cheese.
Anticipation

Prompt: I wonder where hes going to look?

At this point in the story, the experimenter

paused for 1 to 2 seconds to
give the child a chance to look in anticipation
for Sam to appear at one of the
two mouse holes. The video record was used later to determine
where the
child looked after this prompt was given. To avoid the possibility
that the
child followed the experimenters
gaze, the experimenter,
facing the child,
took care that she was looking at the child at this critical point. The experiment proceeded
with explicitly questioning
the child about Sams action.
Sam wants to get the cheese.

Action Prediction
Justification

Question: Which box will he open (first)?

Question: Why do you think he will open that box (first)?

In the true-belief
condition,
the story events
timing of the events. In Episode 2, the wording
changed so that the unexpected
transfer occurred
down the tunnel to bed:

were identical
from the
of the story events was
before Sam mouse went

True belief version of Episode 2:

Katie came in from playing outside. Hello, Sam, she said. Hello, Katie, he
replied. As Katie walked past the blue box, she looked into it and saw the
cheese. Oh look! she said. Someones left a piece of cheese in here. Ill put
it in the red box and I can eat it later for my tea. So she picked up the cheese
and walked (fully visible, Sam watching her) across the hill to the other
mouse hole where she put the cheese in the red box. Ill go and see my friend
now, she said. Im so tired now, said Sam. He went all the way down the
tunnel

and went to bed where

he fell fast asleep.

In the houses scenario, Sarah was reading a letter while standing on the
top balcony of her house. It was a very hot day and Sarah got thirsty. She
put her letter in the green box on the top balcony and went inside for a
drink. (Sarah disappears
into the house, and stays out of sight). A strong

W.A.

384

Clements

and J. Perner

gust of wind blew the letter out of the green box and it floated all the way
down into the blue box on the lower balcony. The story included the same
Prompt questions and the same critical sentences as the mouse scenario. In
particular,
after Sarah states her desire to continue
reading the letter the
experimenter
says, I wonder where shes going to look?
From the video record it was later determined
whether the child was
looking at the top or bottom balcony at this point in the story. This was then
followed by the Action Prediction
question: Sarah wants to get her letter.
Which box will she look in (first) ?; this was followed by the Justification
Question.
Scoring of Responses
Responses were scored from the video record of childrens looking, pointing, and verbal behavior at the critical points in the story. In the mouse
scenario, for instance, the video was played through to the point at which
the experimenter
said (Anticipation
Prompt),
I wonder where Sams
going to look. As soon as the experimenter
had finished this sentence, the
video was paused and a judgment
was made as to which of the two
locations the child was looking at. The video was then continued
up to the
point where the experimenter
asked the child the Action Prediction
Question: Sam wants to get his cheese. Which box will he open (first)? The
childs response to this question consisted mostly of unambiguous
pointing
or pointing together with a verbal response. The scoring of responses was
made for all children by the experimenter
herself. For every fourth child
(25%), a naive observer was shown the video of the first session at the
critical points and asked to say where the child was looking or pointing.
The naive observer was kept ignorant of whether the child was in the trueor false-belief
condition.
Interrater Agreement
There was perfect agreement
between scorers on childrens pointing
or
verbal responses
to the Action Prediction
Question.
Of the 44 doubly
scored looking responses
to the Anticipation
Prompt, there were only 5
differences
(88.6% agreement).
For further analysis of these data the experimenters
original judgment
was used.
RESULTS
Looking
Looking
both the
sponses
conditions

in Anticipation
responses
in the first and second session were very similar for
false- and true-belief
stories. Only 7 children gave different rein the two false-belief
conditions
and 7 in the two true-belief
(6 of them in the youngest age group).

implicit

Understanding

of Belief

385

Looking to the objects original location (A) is indicative of an implicit

understanding
of false belief only if it occurs exclusively in the false-belief
condition.
If it occurs in both conditions, it might indicate merely a retracing of story events; that is, the object was first at Location A before it was
transferred
to its current one, Location B. If, however, the children look to
Location
A only in the false-belief
condition
but not in the true-belief
condition,
then it must reflect some understanding
of belief, because it is
difficult to conceive of any other reason for their looking at A other than
that they expect the protagonist
to appear in Location A because of his or
her false belief.
Accordingly,
Table 1 shows the mean frequencies
of looking to the
objects original location (A) or its new location (B) in the false-belief
(FB)
and in the true-belief
(TB) condition. The frequencies
are averaged over
the first and second testing sessions. Frequencies
in the two testing sessions
were very similar (all differences
5 3). Moreover, to get an impression
of
the developmental
trend, children were divided into four age groups of 11
children each.
As Table 1 shows, only one child below the age of 2 years and 11 months
showed any sign of implicit understanding
of belief by anticipating
the
protagonist
correctly at Location A in the false-belief
condition
and at B
in the true-belief
condition. In sharp contrast, almost all children of 2 years
11 months and older did so in at least one of the two sessions. This increase
in the correct anticipation
pattern from the youngest to the second youngest group (and any group thereafter)
is statistically
reliable: x* (1, IZ = 22)
= 11.73,p < .OOl.
This remarkably
sharp onset of correct anticipations
at about 2 years
and 11 months is in truth even sharper, because in the youngest group there
are as many, if not more cases where children made exactly the opposite to
correct anticipations.
These completely
wrong anticipations
provide an
estimate of how often children tended to look erratically at either Location

Table 1. Mean Frequencies of Looking to Location A or B in Response to

Anticipation Prompt, Averaged Over the Two Looking Sessions (maximum = 11)
Age Group
story
FB TB

2;5-2;lO
(n = 11)

2;11-$2
(It = 11)

A B(+)

1
6
1.5
2.5

8.5

2.5
0
0

1.5
0.5
0

BB
AA
BA
Note. + marks

the looking

pattern

indicative

$347
(n = 11)

of implicit

understanding

3;8-4,6
(n = 11)
11
0
0
0
of belief,

W.A.

386

Clements

and J. Perner

A or B. Because they showed the completely wrong looking pattern on 5

occasions (2.5 times on average), the 2 times (1 on average) they happened
to look in the right places were probably just lucky guesses. In contrast, not
a single child in the older groups showed the pattern of completely inaccurate anticipations, which in turn means that the ones who anticipated
correctly did so for good reasons.
To get a best estimate measure of implicit understanding of belief (rather
than lucky guesses), we assigned the following scores for each session. If the
child showed the correct anticipation pattern by looking at A in the false-belief condition and at B in the true-belief condition (AB), a score of +l was
given. If the child looked either at A in both conditions (AA) or at B in both
(BB), a score of zero was given. If the child looked at B in the false-belief
story but at A in the true belief story (BA, completely wrong), a score of -1
was awarded. This negative score is justified because a BA response pattern
signals guessing. Thus the negative scores obtained for these unlucky incorrect guesses compensate for an equal proportion of positive scores most
likely due to lucky correct guesses (e.g., a child who gave a correct AB response in one, but an incorrect BA response in the other session, ended up
with a score of zero, indicating no implicit understanding of belief).
The upper line in Figure 1 shows the mean implicit understanding score
for each age group. Again this line makes clear that there is no sign of
implicit understanding among the youngest group. In contrast, almost all
older children have some understanding. This very sharp and early sign of
implicit understanding of false belief contrasts strongly with explicit responses to the experimenters Action Prediction question.
Responses

to Action Prediction

Question

Childrens responses to the Action Prediction question in the first session

were very similar to their responses in the second session. Only 4 children
gave different responses in the two false-belief stories; 2 children gave
different responses in the two true-belief stories, and 1 child gave different
responses for the false- and for the true-belief stories. Table 2 shows the
mean frequencies of pointing to and/or verbally indicating Location A or
B as the place where the protagonist will look for his cheese in the falseand in the true-belief condition. Frequencies are averaged over the first
and second testing sessions. Frequencies in the two testing sessions were
very similar (all differences % 3). There was a significant increase with age
of children who indicated the correct locations in at least one of the
sessions, x* (3, n = 44) = 9.37,p < .05.
To our surprise, there was no significant (or reliable) difference in childrens responses to the Action Prediction Question in the false-belief stories, whether the word first was used (36% A responses) or not (32% A
responses): Binomial test, N = 6, x = 2,~ > .30. This result failed to replicate

387

Implicit Understanding of Belief

25

1.5

0.5

hpliiil

Explicit

-0.5
2;s -' 2;lO

2;ll '- $2

3;3 1 3;?

3;a I 4;6

AgO

Figure 1. Mean implicit and explicit understanding

scores.

the finding reported by Siegal and Beattie (1991). However, the apparent
conflict may be resolved by the fact that Siegal and Beattie, (1991) obtained
their finding on the story vignettes developed by Wellman and Bartsch
(1988) and not on the traditional false-belief story. The critical difference
might be that in Wellman and Bartschs vignettes the protagonists mistaken
belief was explicitly introduced without any justification for why the protagonist might be in such a confused state. As the significant finding by
Siegal and Beattie suggests, the use of the word first may help clear up the
experimenters intended interpretation of these vignettes. In contrast,as our
nonsignificant, minimal effect suggests, this help is not needed in the traditional false-belief story where the reasons for the protagonists false belief
are made clear for those who are able to understand belief.

W.A.

388

Clements and J. Perner

Table 2. Mean Frequencies of Responding with Location A or B in Response

to the Action Prediction Question, Averaged over the Two Testing Sessions
(maximum = 11)
Age Group
story
FBTB

2;5-2;lO
(n = 11)

A B(+)

1
8.5
0.5
1

BB
AA
BA

Note. + marks the correct

Comparing

Implicit

answer

with Explicit

2;113;2
(n = 11)

3;>3;7
(n = 11)

2.5

8.5
0
0

7
0
0

5.5
0
0

pattern

indicative

of explicit

understanding

3;8-4;6
(la
= 11)

of belief.

Understanding

To compare the development

of implicit understanding
with that of explicit understanding
of belief, we computed an explicit understanding
score
for each child along the same lines as the implicit understanding
score. The
lower line in Figure 1 shows the mean explicit understanding
score for each
age group.
The pattern of both lines (implicit and explicit understanding)
highlights three particularly
noteworthy
aspects. First, explicit understanding
develops in line with previous findings on comparable
samples (e.g., Perner
et al., 1987). A minority of children younger than 3% years but a majority
of children older than 4 years give correct answers. In fact, if the oldest
group of 11 children is divided into the 5 children who are younger than 4
years, and the 6 children who are older, then an even closer match to the
traditional
picture of false belief being understood
at about 4 years
emerges: 40% of the under-4s but 83% of the over-4s gave correct answers.
Second, the findings presented
here indicate that below the age of 2;ll
no child gives a correct answer to the Action Prediction
question. Moreover, none of these children showed any implicit understanding
of belief.
Therefore,
at that young age, there is no evidence
for any implicit or
explicit understanding
of false belief. This lack of understanding
of false
belief cannot easily be attributed
to a failure to follow story events, because
most of these children gave correct answers to the Prompt questions
assessing such an understanding.
Only 2 of the 11 children had problems with
questions in more than one story, and 8 had problems with one question in
one of the four stories.
Third, Figure 1 shows a large gap between implicit and explicit understanding of false belief (Sign Test: n = 26, M = 5,~ < .Ol). As one can see
from the graph the gap was entirely caused by the three older age groups.
And indeed there is no significant difference between scores in the young-

implicit

Understanding

of Belief

389

est group (Sign Test: 12= 6, M = 2,~ > .30), but there is in the second (n =
8, M = 0,~ < .Ol) and in the third (n = 8, M = 1, p < .05). The size of the
gap is particularly impressive for the second age group of 3-year-olds. In
this group, 10 children anticipated the protagonists appearance correctly
in at least one session (7 did so in both sessions) but only 3 answered the
test question correctly in at least one session (2 did so in both). In other
words, this group of 3-year-olds had reached a level of performance
(77.2%) on implicit understanding that was not reached on explicit understanding even by the 4-year-old group (63.6%). Only if we look at the older
6 children in this group (over-4s, mean age = 4;3) do we see a level of
explicit understanding (83% correct) that compares favorably with the
level of implicit understanding achieved over a year earlier.
Justifications
The responses

to the justification question in the false-belief condition

were coded within six categories inspired by Yoon and Yoon (unpublished
manuscript, 1993). The following two categories were used for justifications
of correct answers to the Action Prediction question:
1. Belief: This category includes responses by 2 children that referred to
the protagonists belief (e.g., because she doesnt think its in there)
and the reference by one child to the protagonists ignorance of the
objects true location (e.g., because she doesnt know its in there).
2. Past Deed: This category includes references to the fact that the
protagonist had originally put the object in Location A (e.g., cos she
put it in here first).
The following two categories were used for correct and wrong responses
to the Action Prediction question:
3.

4.

Irrelevant: This category included uninformative repetition of the

answer (e.g., he just will), and the mention of an irrelevant fact (e.g.,
because its lost, because thats empty).
No Explanation: Children contributed to this category if they said
dont know or stayed silent despite repeated prompting.

The remaining two categories were used for wrong answers to the question
only:
5.
6.

Current Location: This category included references to the objects

current location; for example, because the letter is in here.
Goal: This category contains references to the protagonists goal; for
example, because he wants (to eat) the cheese.

390

W.A.

Clements

and J. Perner

The frequency of these justifications for the four age groups is shown in
Table 3. One noticeable feature is that only very few children justify a
mistaken action with the actors false belief and barely more than half give
any relevant reason (belief or past deed).
It is not clear whether the size of this lag between correct explicit
responses and correct justifications of these responses is as large as it
appears to be in our data. Although Yoon and Yoon (unpublished manuscript, 1993) report a lag of similar size, Wimmer and Weichbold (1993)
emphasise that most correct answers are also justified correctly. Nevertheless, whatever its size, this lag can be seen as a continuation of the process
of explicitation (Karmiloff-Smith, 1986, 1992) that starts with childrens
ability to correctly anticipate the protagonists movement implicitly without being able to do so in response to a question. Then children become
able to answer explicit questions correctly but are not able to give reasons
for their answer. Only in the final step of explicitness do they become able
to justify their responses.
DISCUSSION
This experiment replicated the typical developmental course of explicit
understanding of false belief. However, it also demonstrated that implicit
understanding substantially precedes explicit understanding, suggesting
that the onset of implicit understanding is very abrupt at about 2 years 11
months. Over 80% of children this age and older show implicit understanding by looking at Location A in the false-belief task but nof in the
true-belief task.

Table 3. Frequency of Different Type of Justifications

Prediction Question in False-Belief Stories

for Answers to Action

Age Group
Category
Belief
Past Deed
Irrelevant
for A
for B
No explanation
for A
for B
Current location
Goal

z&5-2;lO
(n = 11)

2;11-3;2
(II = 11)

3;>3;7
(n = 11)

3846
(II = 11)

0
0

1
1

0
0

2
0

1
0

Implicit

Understanding

of Belief

391

The total lack of any understanding

of belief among the youngest group
cannot be easily discounted
as a methodological
artifact for example, of
children
of this age being unable to follow a story as complex as the
false-belief
story. Despite both looking in anticipation
to and explicitly
referring to Location B in the false-belief
condition,
children at this age
had few problems in answering the prompt questions.
We now need to explain the fact that earlier understanding
could be
elicited by monitoring
eye movements
despite the fact that there were no
changes to the original false-belief task. There are at least three main ways
of explaining
this earlier competence.
One explanation
is that childrens
eye movements
reveal the same understanding
as their verbal answers with
the discrepancy
caused by the childs interpreting
the experimenters
question differently
than was intended by the experimenter.
According
to this explanation,
even very young children (at least from
2 years 11 months and older) have an understanding
of belief but are
misled by the test question. One way children could be misled was suggested by Siegal and Beattie (1991). As they adapted their proposal to our
experiment,
children interpreted
the question, Which box will he open?
as referring not to the first attempt to find the object but to the final and
successful attempt. We tried to prevent this potential misunderstanding
by
adding the word first to the test question, as Siegal and Beattie suggested
but with minimal effect. That finding makes this explanation
implausible
although it remains for future research to rule out other versions of this
proposal (e.g., Perner et al., 1987) more convincingly.
The second type of explanation
for our results is that eye movements
reflect tentative
hypotheses
during the childs reasoning
process, whereas
their verbal responses reflect the final result of that process. That is, from
the age of 2 years 11 months and older, children are able to understand
false belief, but are not yet convinced of the correctness
of this hypothesis
and relinquish
it in favor of the earlier well-established
hypothesis that the
protagonist
goes to where the object actually is.
For this to be a plausible
explanation,
we would expect the stronger,
more certain hypotheses
to be expressed at least as often as the weaker,
less certain hypotheses. This, however, is patently not the case. Of the 33
children in our target transitional
age group (i.e., 2 years 11 months and
older, see Figure l), 18 consistently
said in both false-belief
stories that the
protagonist
would go to Location B. Of these 18 children, 12 looked consistently at Location A. This bias towards A is significant (Median test: -2
= 9.3,~ < .Ol) and is incompatible
with the above explanation.
The third explanation
for our results is that eye movements
reveal a
different
type of knowledge
(namely
implicit)
rather than the explicit
knowledge
expressed in verbal responses. Here we use the intuitive definition of implicit knowledge
as knowledge
which is unverbalizable,
a crite-

392

W.A.

Clements

and J. Perner

rion also employed

by Perry, Church, and Goldin-Meadow
(1988) in explaining the gesture-speech,
mismatch data.
The real question, however, is what the nature of this knowledge
is that
makes it nonverbalizable
and here, the explanatory
strategy employed by
Goldin-Meadow,
Alibali, and Church (1993, p. 292) is not open to us. Their
suggestion that images can be more easily expressed in the global-synthetic
structure of gestures rather than in the linear-segmented
form of language is
used to explain a contrast between gestures and verbal expressions. In contrast, the distinction
in our study is one between a verbal or gestural response (pointing
at Location
B with or without verbally
referring
to
Location B) and a nonsymbolic
orienting response (looking at Location A).
An alternative
explanation
might be that the knowledge detected in eye
movements
is a reflection of implicit procedural
knowledge
as defined by
Karmiloff-Smith
(1986, 1992), with consciousness
and verbalizability
as
steps to higher explicitation.
Unfortunately,
this also is an unlikely scheme
for explaining
our data. Although
one could agree that children are confronted with some cases where a person searches for something
in the
wrong place, it is implausible
that children routinely engage in anticipating
the appearance
of mistaken persons by looking to the place where people
think an object is.
Having failed to find a precedent
for the kind of implicit knowledge
demonstrated
in our study, we attempt a speculative
explanation
in terms
of a distinction
between representing
a fact and making a judgment
about
that fact. Answering
a question, whether verbally or by pointing, requires
a judgment.
Looking in anticipation
does not. For lack of a better terminology, we refer to the difference as judgmental
and nonjudgmental
knowledge.1
This difference
is related to one that Perner (1991, Chap. 3) drew for
characterizing
the intellectual
abilities of infants in their first year and
later. In the first year, children are able to entertain
only a single mental
model of the world. In the second year, infants become able to entertain
multiple mental models. Applying this to our distinction,
a single mental
model is sufficient to represent the current state of the world and to act on
it. That is, pure action (i.e., looking in anticipation)
is done only on the basis
of a representation
of reality; that is, one model. But to make a judgment
(verbally or gesturally)
at least two models are required: One to represent
the proposition
to be judged (information
expressed),
and the other to

tPerhaps
declarative
and nondeclarative
distinctions
introduced
by Shimamura
and
Squire (1989) to replace the difference
between declarative
and procedural
knowledge,
covers the same ground. However, this is difficult to tell because that terminology
has never
been given a functional
meaning but only a definition
in terms of the region of the brain
where each kind of knowledge
is being processed.

Implicit

Understanding

of Belief

393

represent
the state of the world by which this proposition
is to be judged.
In other words, to make a judgment
is to convey that the verbally
or
otherwise
expressed
information
(the model of whatever
is being proposed) conforms with reality (the other model).
We would like to generalize
that claim about infancy to knowledge
acquisition
in general; that is, the fact that young infants are able to entertain but one model should not be viewed as a maturational
limitation
of
infants, but as a result of infants being universal
novices in representing
facts about the world (not that they may not be born with useful general
constraints;
e.g., Karmiloff-Smith,
1992). So, whenever
knowledge
is acquired in a new domain (acquired procedurally
or through abstraction
of
observed regularities),
it becomes first available nonjudgmentally
before it
can be used to make judgments.
For that reason, children in our study are
able to anticipate
the protagonists
movements
correctly with their eyes
before they can make a judgment
about where he will go.
A dissociation
between judgmental
and nonjudgmental
knowledge
is
suggested by some recent findings in both the developmental
and nondevelopmental
literature;
for example, Zabrucky
and Ratner (1986) report
that despite both sixth and third graders reading incongruent
sentences
more slowly than congruent
sentences, third graders detect far fewer passage inconsistencies
in their verbal report. One possibility
is that reading
time, described
as an on-line response (Zabrucky
& Ratner) is nonjudgmental, the child reading the passage without having to make any judgment about its contents. Only when the child is asked to give a verbal
report does the response become judgmental.
The gesture-speech
mismatch data could also be explained
by our distinction. Subjects express novel, more advanced strategies in gestures because gestures, unlike the verbal response, frame the form of an argument
without providing
any judgment
as to whether reality conforms
to this
argument
or not.
Finally, even in the nondevelopmental
literature,
there seem to be dissociations which map onto the judgmental/nonjudgmental
distinction.
For
example, Marcel (1993) reported blindsight phenomena
under subliminal
presentation
of stimuli in subjects with unimpaired
vision. Under suitably
short presentation
times and instructions
to avoid guessing unless necessary, subjects asked to say yes when they saw a stimulus were at chance
accuracy. When asked to blink in response to a stimulus, accuracy went up
to 70% or even to 80%. We suggest that this difference
occurs because
saying yes under instruction
not to guess feels more like making a judgment while blinking feels more like just making a response to a stimulus.
We suggest that this result illustrates, if nothing more significant, the dissociability of different
representations
being available
for judgmental
and
nonjudgmental
action.

394

W.A.

Clements

and J. Perner

We are aware that the suggested distinction between judgmental and

nonjudgmental representations is still very speculative. Yet, we decided to
present this distinction to provide a direction in which our data can be
shown to point.
To conclude, let us return to the original concern about the implications
of our results for childrens development of a theory of mind. There have
been many attempts to demonstrate explicit understanding of false belief
in young 3-year-olds. Our finding that over 80% of children as young as 2
years 11 months look in anticipation
at Location A could be interpreted
as
a great success in this respect.
However, unless future research shows that young childrens failure to
answer the false-belief question correctly is due to misinterpretation
of test
questions, the signs are that we are dealing with a different type of knowledge; implicit as opposed to explicit knowledge.
This demonstration
of
early competence
is particularly
impressive since the very same paradigm
is used as in the traditional
false-belief
task. Hence our finding is not as
easily open to alternative
interpretations
as are the modifications
used in
other studies (see Perner et al., 1994, for a review of these interpretation
problems).
However,
the finding that children
have an earlier implicit
understanding
of false belief does not in itself imply that explicit understanding must be possible any earlier than has been traditionally
thought,
around the age of 4.

REFERENCES
Bartsch,

K., & Wellman, H.M. (1989). Young childrens attribution

of action to beliefs and
desires. Child Development, 60, 946-964.
Church, R.B., & Goldin-Meadow,
S. (1986). The mismatch between gesture and speech as an
index of transitional
knowledge.
Cognition, 23,43-71.
Flavell, J.H., Speer, J.R., Green, EL., & August, D.I. (1981). The development
of comprehension monitoring
and knowledge
about communication.
Monographs of the Society for
Research in Child Development, 46, (Serial No. 5.).
Goldin-Meadow,
S., Alibali, M.W., & Church, R.B. (1993). Transitions in concept acquisition:
Using the hand to read the mind. Psychologicnl Review, ZOO,(Z)279-297.
Harris, PL., Kruithof, A., Terwogt, M.M., & Visner, T. (1981). Childrens detection and awareness of textual anomaly. Journnl of Experimental Child Psychology, 31,212-230.
Karmiloff-Smith,
A. (1986). From meta-processes
to conscious
access: evidence from childrens drawing. Cognition, 34,57X33.
Karmiloff-Smith,
A. (1992). Beyond modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive
science. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Lewis, C., & Osborne,
A. (1990). Three-year-olds
problems
with false belief: conceptual
deficit or linguistic artifact? Child Developmenf, 61, 1514-1519.
Lloyd, P & Pavlidis, G.T. (1978). Child language and eye movements:
The relative effects of
sentence
and situation
on comprehension.
Unpublished
manuscript,
University
of
Manchester.
Marcel, A.J. (1993). Slippage in the unity of consciousness.
In Experimental and theoretical

Implicit

Understanding

of Belief

395

studies ofconsciousness.
(Ciba Foundation Symposium
174) (pp. 168-186). Chichester,
England: Wiley.
Moses, L.J., & Flavell, J.H. (1990). Inferring
false beliefs from actions and reactions.
Child
Development,
61,929-945.
Perner, J. (1991). Understanding the represenrational mind. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Perner, J.,Baker, S. & Hutton, D. (1994). Prelief: The conceptual
origins of belief and pretence.
In C. Lewis & P. Mitchell (Eds.), Origins of an understanding of mind (pp. 261-286).
Hove, East Sussex: Erlbaum Associates.
Perner, J., Leekam, S.R., & Wimmer, H. (1987). Three-year-olds
difficulty with false belief:
The case for a conceptual
deficit. British Journal of Developmental
Psychology,
5,
125-137.
Perry, M., Church, R.B., & Goldin-Meadow,
S. (1988). Transitional
knowledge
in the acquisition of concepts
Cognitive Development,
3,359400.
Roth, D., & Leslie, A.M. (1991). The recognition
of attitude conveyed by utterance:
A study
of preschool
and autistic children. British Journal of Developmental
Psychology, 9,
315-330.
Siegal, M. & Beattie, K. (1991). Where to look first for childrens knowledge
of false belief.
Cognition, 38,1-12.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University
Press.
Wellman, H.M. (1990). The Childs Theory of Mind. Cambridge,
MA: Bradford Books.
Wellman, H.M., & Bartsch, K. (1988). Young childrens reasoning about beliefs, Cognition, 30,
239-277.
Wimmer,
H., & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation
and constraining
function of wrong beliefs in young childrens understanding
of deception.
Cognition,
13,103-128.
Wimmer, H. & Weichbold, V. (1993). Childrens theory of mind: Fodors heuristics examined.
Unpublished
manuscript,
Department
of Psychology, University of Salzburg.
Yoon, M.G., & Yoon, M. (1993). Correct prediction of intentional action develops earlier than
attribution of false belief in three-year-olds. Unpublished
manuscript,
Dalhousie
University, Halifax, Canada.
Zabrucky,
K., & Ratner, H.H. (1986). Childrens
comprehension
monitoring
and recall of
inconsistent
stories. Child Developmenf, 57,1401-1418.