Older (but not younger) preschoolers understand that knowledge differs between people and across time

Children's expectations about the stability of others' knowledge and preference states

It is a crucial ability to predict others' psychological states across time and contexts. Focusing on cultural inventions such as songs and stories, we contrasted children's attributions of stability with others' knowledge and preference states across time and space and whether these attributions change as a function of children's familiarity with the known/liked items. Children (91 4-year-olds and 97 6-year-olds) were introduced to characters who knew or liked a song, a story, a game and a dance that were either novel or familiar. Children were asked whether the characters would still know/like these when they move to another city or when they grow up to be an adult. Both age groups expected these attributes to be more durable in the moving scenario compared with the growing-up scenario, but this trend became more robust with age. Whereas overall children did not judge knowledge as more durable than preferences, children found knowledge to be more enduring with age. The 6-year-olds' stability attributions also increased when known/liked items were familiar. These results suggest that, across the preschool years, children become more nuanced in their predictions about the future forms of knowledge and preference states.

Children's epistemic forecasting: The case of knowledge loss

Do children understand the cognitive changes that happen with development? Two experiments examined whether 4- and 6-year-olds understand that, as time passes, children forget some of the things they currently know. In Experiment 1, children were taught the names of a new person and a new object and then were informed that contact with these items will discontinue. Children were asked whether they would know the names tomorrow and as grown-ups. Both age groups demonstrated awareness that forgetting might occur. In Experiment 2, children showed a similar pattern of judgments about a peer's knowledge. The findings suggest that knowledge loss is integral to children's future thinking and is part of their understanding of the mind as a dynamically changing system.

Outcome Knowledge and False Belief

Virtually every social interaction involves reasoning about the perspectives of others, or ‘theory of mind (ToM).’ Previous research suggests that it is difficult to ignore our current knowledge when reasoning about a more naïve perspective (i.e., the curse of knowledge). In this Mini Review, we discuss the implications of the curse of knowledge for certain aspects of ToM. Particularly, we examine how the curse of knowledge influences key measurements of false belief reasoning. In closing, we touch on the need to develop new measurement tools to discern the mechanisms involved in the curse of knowledge and false belief reasoning, and how they develop across the lifespan.