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Abstract

Recent research using looking based methods suggests that infants in their second year already expect others to act according to their false beliefs (e.g. Onishi & Baillargeon,2005; Southgate, Senju, Csibra, 2007; Träuble, Marinović & Pauen, 2010). The current study examines whether 18-month-olds are able to not only recognize othersʼ false beliefs, but also actively use their understanding of false belief when interacting with another person. Specifically, infants saw an experimenter (E1) remove an aversive object so that she could play with a toy in two boxes. Subsequently, she put the toy in one box (target), adjusted the position of the other box (distractor), and left. In her absence a second experimenter changed the scene such that both boxes contained an aversive object, and neither box contained the toy. We measured infantsʼ spontaneous pointing upon E1's return. Preliminary data (n=19) show that infants pointed to warn E1 in anticipation of her false belief about the true contents of the target box and significantly less to the distractor box (Wilcoxon, p=.008). This is also reflected in infants' first point across trials (Wilcoxon, p=.03). In addition, the specific design used allows for the exclusion of an ignorance interpretation or low-level explanations, e.g. infants warned the experimenter about the box she last attended, or where they had last seen the toy. These results demonstrate infantsʼ social pragmatic usage of belief-based action anticipations,and give further support for a rich interpretation of infant pointing.