Alan M. Leslie
Department of Psychology and RU Center for Cognitive Science
Abstract: I will give a brief introduction to cognitive research on theory of mind by focusing on the development of belief-desire reasoning. Theory of mind began to be studied only in the early 1980’s, which is rather surprising in retrospect, first by those interested in cognitive development but by now interest has spread to a wide range of cognitive scientists and cognitive neuroscientists, including cognitive engineers. Natural belief-desire reasoning shows a characteristic and persistent rational bias toward attributing one’s own beliefs to other people.