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Children's Attributions
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Running head: CHILDREN'S ATTRIBUTIONS OF BELIEFSChildren’s Attributions of Beliefs to Humans and God: Cross-Cultural EvidenceNicola Knight, Paulo Sousa, and Justin L. BarrettUniversity of Michigan, Ann ArborScott AtranCNRS, Paris, and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
 
Children's Attributions
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AbstractThe capacity to attribute beliefs to others in order to understand action is one of the mainstays of human cognition. Yet it is debatable whether children attribute beliefs in the same way to allagents. In this paper, we present the results of a false-belief task concerning humans and God runwith a sample of Maya children aged 4 to 7, and place them in the context of severalpsychological theories of cognitive development. Children were found to attribute beliefs indifferent ways to humans and God. The evidence also speaks to the debate concerning theuniversality and uniformity of the development of folk-psychological reasoning.
 
Children's Attributions
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Author noteNicola Knight, Department of Psychology, Department of Anthropology, and Culture &Cognition Program; Paulo Sousa, Department of Anthropology, and Culture & CognitionProgram; Justin L. Barrett, Institute for Social Research; Scott Atran, Institut Jean Nicod(CNRS), and Institute for Social Research.We would like to acknowledge the continuing support of the Culture and CognitionProgram at the University of Michigan. This research is also supported in part by grants from theJohn Templeton Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health,and CAPES (Coordenaçao de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior). Many thanks toValentina Vapnarsky for help with design and translations, to Edilberto Ucán Ek’ for help withrunning the experiments, to Brian Malley for comments on a previous draft, and most of all tothe participants and their families for collaboration and hospitality in Yucatán. We would alsolike to thank Dedre Gentner, Paul Harris, and one anonymous referee for their comments andsuggestions.
 
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Nicola Knight,Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 525 East University, Ann Arbor, Michigan,48109; Ph. +1 (734) 936-8438, Fax +1 (734) 764-3520, e-mail knightn@umich.edu.
 
Keywords: False-belief tasks, God, religion, theory of mind, Yukatek Maya
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