A re-examination of the broccoli task: Implications for children's understanding of subjective desire

Repacholi and Gopnik (1997) found that the “broccoli” task revealed precocious understanding of desire in 18-month-olds. We review the findings of this study and six similar studies, and also present the results of a new broccoli task given at two time points. Repacholi and Gopnik's findings for 18-month-olds stand out as an outlier. The broccoli task reveals some nascent understanding of desire in children aged about 24 months, but at best, only about 1/3 of such children show clear evidence of understanding, leaving much room for further development in children's understanding of desire.