How do children come to understand that others have mental representations, e.g., of an object's location? Preschoolers go through two transitions on verbal false-belief tasks, in which they have to predict where an agent will search for an object that was moved in her absence. First, while three-and-a-half-year-olds usually fail at approach…

Demonstrates that connectionist models described in "Rethinking Innateness" (Elman, et al., 1996) depend on innately assumed representations and do not offer a genuine alternative to nativism. Presents simulation results showing that the models are incapable of deriving genuine abstract representations that are not presupposed. Maintains…