Social reward predicts false belief understanding in Namibian Hai||om children

Abstract

Social motivation is theorized to promote Theory of Mind development in childhood, but research testing this link is scarce and largely limited to urban middle‐class milieus of the Global North. Here, we investigated the link between social motivation (i.e., social reward responsivity) and Theory of Mind (i.e., false belief understanding) among N = 59 Hai||om children (AgeRange = 2.3–8.0 years) from rural Namibia, an indigenous community where children's social experience with peers and adults differs much from urban middle‐class milieus typically sampled in developmental science research. Children's preference for adult, but not peer faces predicted their false belief performance. Moreover, their false belief performance increased with age, showing mastery of the current false belief task by the preschool years. These results accommodate universalist claims on the link between social motivation and Theory of Mind while suggesting a particular contribution of the social reward responsivity to adult social partners.