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Investigators examined the role of deictic complexity in the context of false-belief understanding. Deictic relations (i.e., I and YOU, HERE and THERE, and NOW and THEN) are used to describe one's perspective on events in the environment. Differences in complexity between responding in accordance with "I" (self) and "YOU" (other) relations are thought to be critical in explaining the relative difficulty of false-belief tasks in which taking the perspective of another plays a central role. Reaction times for false-belief tasks in which the presence of self and other relations was systematically manipulated were compared. A significant difference emerged between mean reaction times for these two sets of tasks, thus providing direct evidence that deictic relations are involved in false-belief tasks.
False-belief understanding may be defined as the ability to know that someone can have a misconception about an event (Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg, & Cohen, 2000). Consider the following example of a task used by Sabbagh and Taylor (2000) to test for false belief:
Ben put a folder and a clipboard on his desk. His friend Maggie noticed that he had lots of work to do. Then Maggie went out for coffee. While Maggie was gone, Ben moved the clipboard. Ben put the clipboard on the bookshelf. He left the folder on his desk. Where will Maggie think the clipboard is?
To answer this "unexpected transfer" (UT) task correctly, respondents need to understand that Maggie will not know that Ben moved the clipboard and thus she will act on the basis of a false belief.
Now consider an example of a task in which respondents were presented with a similar scenario involving a hypothetical photograph:
Ben put a folder and a clipboard on his desk. His friend, Maggie, took a picture of these things. Then, Maggie put the camera away. After a little while, Ben moved the clipboard. Ben put the clipboard on the bookshelf. He left the folder on his desk. Where will the clipboard be in the photograph?
To answer correctly, respondents need not "construct the mental representation of another" but may simply recount what was in the photograph. Although these are apparently similar tasks, the UT task tests false-belief understanding whereas the second task does not.
Findings from studies that involve false-belief tasks...