Investigated
When do infants update beliefs after violations?
Short answer
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The clearest evidence places belief updating around 14–18 months: infants can use explicit verbal information to revise an agent’s location belief, and some studies report updating in ambiguous communicative contexts. However, replication failures and competing theories caution that violation-of-expectation results may depend heavily on procedures, attention, and the kind of belief being tested.
The views on this question
Two lenses on the same evidence. Source weight and the primary source ratio show what each rests on.
Alternative
Source weight 56%Lens adapted to this topic: Task and interpretation limits
A serious dissenting position argues that infant violation-of-expectation and anticipatory-looking findings may not establish robust belief revision. Performance can vary with procedural details, motivation, attention, language, and the demands of mapping information to an agent’s belief. On this reading, the evidence supports sensitivity to surprising events or communicative cues, while leaving the mechanism and developmental timing unresolved.
- Failed replications have been reported, and commentators argue that procedural differences, participant motivation, and attention may explain divergent results across early false-belief tasks.
- The 18-month revision study directly tests whether children revise attributed beliefs, highlighting that the capacity remains an empirical question rather than a settled developmental milestone.
- Evidence that violations promote learning does not by itself show that infants revised an agent’s belief; surprise can instead alter exploration and learning.
- Stronger evidence for revising fundamental physical and psychological beliefs is reported in 4- to 6-year-olds after multiple counterexamples, suggesting that robust belief revision may develop later than early infant responses imply.
- In older children, belief revision depends on the strength of prior beliefs and the strength of counterevidence, a framework that cautions against treating one infant violation response as general belief change.