Pragmatic development explains the Theory-of-Mind Scale

•Challenges constructivist interpretations of the Theory-of-Mind Scale.•Shows that nativists can explain why children fail verbal false-belief tasks before 4.•Provides a pragmatic explanation of the developmental sequence in verbal tasks.•Explains individual differences in verbal false-belief task performance.

Henry Wellman and colleagues have provided evidence of a robust developmental progression in theory-of-mind (or as we will say, “mindreading”) abilities, using verbal tasks. Understanding diverse desires is said to be easier than understanding diverse beliefs, which is easier than understanding that lack of perceptual access issues in ignorance, which is easier than understanding false belief, which is easier than understanding that people can hide their true emotions. These findings present a challenge to nativists about mindreading, and are said to support a social-constructivist account of mindreading development instead. This article takes up the challenge on behalf of nativism. Our goal is to show that the mindreading-scale findings fail to support constructivism because well-motivated alternative hypotheses have not yet been controlled for and ruled out. These have to do with the pragmatic demands of verbal tasks.