1

5 Toddlers appreciate what is visible to others but not others’ experiences

6 Brandon M. Wooa,b and Elizabeth S. Spelkea,b

a
7 Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; and
b
8 The Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, Cambridge MA, 02139

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10 Human social life requires an understanding of the mental states of one’s

11 social partners1–6. Two people who look at the same objects often experience them

12 differently, as a twinkling light or a planet, a 6 or a 9, a cat or Cleo, their pet7–9.

13 Here we test whether toddlers use these differences to interpret and predict other

14 people’s actions. Across four experiments, toddlers attributed their own experiences

15 of pictures (e.g., as upright or inverted) to an actor whose perspective differed. In

16 contrast, toddlers correctly inferred when pictures visible to them were hidden from

17 the actor, and vice versa. These findings reveal a striking limit to early mental state

18 reasoning.

19 In communicating with others, we convey our distinctive experiences: that the

20 Earth, which appears flat, is round10; that when I sit across from you, my left is your

21 right11, and a book that I can read is upside-down to you8,9. The notion that people

22 experience the same objects differently stands at the foundations of human

23 communication and pedagogy12,13, but its origins are obscure. Although studies have

24 revealed that human infants, young children, and nonhuman primates appreciate

25 differences between their own and others’ perceptual access to objects and events14–20, no

26 study has revealed whether minimally verbal individuals understand when they and

27 others, with equal perceptual access to objects, experience those objects differently. We

28 tested for this understanding in 14- to 15-month-old toddlers.

29 We focused on situations where toddlers and an agent experienced objects in

30 different orientations: situations well-studied in older children and adults7–9,21. We used

31 faces as stimuli, because their orientation dramatically affects the experiences and

32 behavior of young children and non-human animals22–27. From birth, infants look longer

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33 at upright than inverted human faces22. Later in the first year, infants can anticipate the

34 future orientations of rotating pictures28. Using faces as stimuli, we ask whether toddlers

35 represent an actor’s actions on objects in relation to the actor’s experience, or their own

36 experience, of the objects.

37 Longstanding research reveals that 3-year-old children prioritize their own

38 perspectives in verbal tasks8,9, claiming that someone who sees objects from another

39 direction will experience them in the same way as the children themselves8,9,21,29, and that

40 someone who has not seen an object move will nevertheless search for that object in its

41 current location30. In some nonverbal tasks, however, infants, toddlers, and young

42 children implicitly reason about the mental states of agents whose perceptual access to

43 objects or events differs from their own14–19,31,32. Do toddlers implicitly reason about the

44 differing experiences of agents who view the same visible objects from different

45 directions?

46 Using a nonverbal task, we probed toddlers’ understanding of the goals of an

47 actor who selectively points or reaches to a picture33,34. Toddlers were familiarized to

48 videorecorded events in which an actor, who faced toddlers, acted on pictures based

49 either on their orientation (e.g., upright versus inverted) or visibility (visible versus

50 occluded) (Fig. 1). At test, the actor moved to the front of the room, where his and the

51 toddlers’ perspectives coincided. We asked whether toddlers expected the actor’s actions

52 to accord with his own changing perspective on pictures.

53 In Experiment 1 (n = 20, preregistered at https://osf.io/znjm9/; Fig. 2A), the actor

54 first sat at the back of a room, facing two pictures of human faces: one upright and one

55 inverted to him (and oppositely oriented to toddlers). The actor repeatedly reached for

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56 faces that were either upright or inverted (counterbalanced between toddlers). Then the

57 actor moved so that his and toddlers’ perspectives coincided. On alternating test trials, he

58 reached for faces that appeared at the same orientation from either his or the toddlers’

59 perspective. Toddlers’ looking time was measured to gauge which action they expected

60 (see SI). We predicted that toddlers would look longer on trials when they perceived a

61 change in the actor’s goal, an unexpected event, based on a long line of developmental

62 research on goal attribution33–35. If toddlers appreciate that the actor’s goal depended on

63 his own perspective, then they should look longer when he reached to the face whose

64 orientation remained the same to them and differed for the actor. If toddlers instead

65 prioritize their own perspective, then they should show the reverse looking pattern.

66 We observed the latter pattern: longer looking at actions inconsistent with

67 toddlers’ perspective (meansame-to-actor = 18.84 s; SD = 9.62 s) than with the actor’s

68 perspective (meansame-to-toddler = 16.05 s; SD = 10.30 s) (β = -0.34, 95% of β [-0.62, -0.07],

69 b = -3.46, t(66) = -2.48, p = .015; Fig. 3A). This finding, however, is open to multiple

70 explanations. First, toddlers may have seen the actor’s actions as communicative, acting

71 with the child’s perspective in mind. Second, toddlers may have failed to engage in

72 mental rotation to determine how the actor’s perspective differed from their own in

73 familiarization and changed at test. Third, toddlers may have performed the mental

74 rotation but found it difficult, and therefore looked longer at the expected rather than the

75 unexpected action at test: a pattern sometimes observed in experiments using looking

76 time methods36.

77 To assess these alternatives, Experiment 2 (n = 32; preregistered at

78 https://osf.io/znjm9/) presented toddlers with the same pictured faces, but varied their

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 79 visibility rather than their orientation (Fig. 2B). The same faces now appeared in the same

80 positions as in Experiment 1 but with opaque screens positioned in front of one face and

81 behind the other face, rendering one face visible only to the toddlers and the other face

82 visible only to the actor. During familiarization, the actor pointed consistently either to

83 the face that was visible to him or to the occluder that hid the other face (counterbalanced

84 between toddlers). At test, the actor moved to the front of the room and pointed to the

85 two faces on alternating trials. If toddlers in Experiment 1 had seen the actor’s actions as

86 communicative, failed to perform the mental rotations necessary to assess the actor’s

87 perspective, or found the mental rotations to be effortful and therefore looked longer at

88 the expected test actions, then toddlers should show the same looking patterns as in

89 Experiment 1, which presented the same social and spatial context and task demands.

90 The toddlers in Experiment 2 showed the reverse looking preference from that of

91 Experiment 1: longer looking at actions inconsistent with the actor’s perspective

92 (meansame-to-toddler = 21.16 s; SD = 8.38 s) than with toddlers’ perspective (meansame-to-actor =

93 16.85 s; SD = 9.32 s) (β = 0.48, 95% of β [0.21, 0.76], b = 4.41, t(142) = 3.41, p < .001;

94 Fig. 3B). These findings speak against the alternative interpretations of Experiment 1 and

95 suggest that toddlers find it harder to determine how faces are experienced by others than

96 whether faces are visible to others.

97 It is possible, however, that toddlers considered a face’s visibility, but not its

98 orientation, to be relevant to others’ actions. Experiment 3 (preregistered at

99 https://osf.io/znjm9/) therefore presented toddlers with an action that emphasized the

100 relevance of a face’s orientation to the actor. Throughout familiarization, the actor sat

101 facing two pictured faces at opposite orientations, reached for the face that was inverted

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102 from his own perspective (and upright to toddlers), and rotated it 180° so that it became

103 upright to him (Fig. 4A). These changes were aimed to facilitate toddlers’ performance in

104 three ways. First, because toddlers saw the face rotate, they would be reminded of the

105 importance of orientation for face perception. Second, because the actor caused the

106 inverted face to rotate, his action revealed more clearly his preference for upright faces.

107 Third, the actor’s preference now accorded with toddlers’ own intrinsic preference for

108 upright faces22. If these changes rendered the task more comprehensible, then toddlers

109 should expect the actor to act consistently from his own perspective at test, when his

110 perspective changed to coincide with toddlers’ own.

111 Because the actor preferred upright faces, trials in which the actor acted

112 consistently from his perspective at test always involved the actor rotating pictures to be

113 upright. Thus, this experiment required a control condition to assess baseline expectations

114 for test events; toddlers were randomly assigned to either the Experimental Condition

115 (described above) or a Control Condition (n = 20 per condition), in which the actor was

116 not present during familiarization, and the face that was upright to toddlers appeared to

117 rotate by itself (Fig. 4B). The two conditions presented the same actions at test and the

118 same pictured faces and orientations throughout the study. Toddlers in the Experimental

119 Condition again looked longer when the actor acted inconsistently from toddlers’

120 perspective (meansame-to-actor = 18.87 s; SD = 9.95 s) than when he acted inconsistently

121 from his own perspective (meansame-to-toddler = 15.58 s; SD = 10.33 s) (β = 0.32, b = 3.26,

122 t(112) = 2.39, p = .018; Fig. 3C), whereas those in the Control Condition did not (β = -

123 0.22, b = -2.29, t(114) = -1.63, p = .099; see SI). Performance in the two conditions

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124 differed significantly (see SI), providing further evidence that the toddlers interpreted the

125 actor’s action from toddlers’ own perspective.

126 Although Experiments 1-3 provide evidence that toddlers erroneously attribute

127 their own experiences of faces to others, it remains possible that this error occurs only in

128 situations involving faces that are upright for the child: Intrinsic preferences for upright

129 faces22 may be so strong as to block toddlers’ ability to imagine how such faces would

130 look to others. In Experiment 4 (n = 24, preregistered at https://osf.io/znjm9/), we

131 removed this potential hindrance by familiarizing toddlers to an actor who viewed

132 pictured faces from the side rather than the back of the room, such that the faces were

133 neither upright nor inverted to toddlers (Fig. 4C). At test, the actor moved such that his

134 perspective coincided with toddlers’ perspective and reached for upright and inverted

135 faces as in Experiment 1. During familiarization, therefore, no faces were upright from

136 the toddlers’ perspective, but one was upright and one was inverted from the actor’s

137 perspective. As in Experiments 1 and 3, the actor reached consistently to the face he

138 experienced as upright for half the toddlers and as inverted for the others.

139 In this experiment, toddlers looked equally when the actor acted inconsistently

140 (meandifferent-to-actor = 13.67 s; SD = 9.61 s) and consistently (meansame-to-actor = 13.73 s; SD

141 = 10.23 s) from his perspective (β = 0.05, 95% of β [-0.23, 0.33], b = 0.05, t(90) = 0.36, p

142 = .717; Fig. 3D). Bayesian analyses revealed that these data provided strong evidence for

143 the null hypothesis (BF10 = 0.033). Again, toddlers failed to appreciate that the actor’s

144 experiences of faces differed from their own during familiarization, even though toddlers

145 experienced no faces as upright in familiarization.

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146 In many respects, pictures of human faces are ideal displays for studies of the

147 sensitivity of minimally verbal beings to others’ experiences of objects, because faces’

148 orientations greatly affect how infants, toddlers, and animals perceive them22–26.

149 Nevertheless, faces at all orientations are likely perceived as faces: instances of a

150 common kind. Will toddlers recognize an actor’s distinctive experience of pictures if

151 their rotation changes toddlers’ impression of the kind of object they depict?

152 To address this question, Experiment 5 (n = 24; preregistered at

153 https://osf.io/znjm9/) presented toddlers with pictures eliciting perceptions of the heads of

154 two different animals when rotated by 90°: a duck versus a rabbit. During familiarization,

155 an actor sat, on alternating trials, on each of the two sides of a room, facing a picture that

156 looked like a rabbit to the actor but like a duck to toddlers, and a second picture that

157 looked like a duck to the actor but like a rabbit to toddlers, and he reached consistently to

158 one of the two animals (counterbalanced across toddlers; Fig. 4D). At test, the actor

159 moved such that his and toddlers’ perspectives coincided, and he reached for each animal

160 in alternation.

161 Once again, toddlers looked longer when the actor acted inconsistently from

162 toddlers’ perspective (meansame-to-actor = 17.61 s; SD = 10.02 s) than when the actor acted

163 inconsistently from his perspective (meansame-to-toddler = 14.78 s; SD = 10.21 s) (β = -0.27,

164 95% of β [-0.49, -0.06], b = -2.78, t(67) = -2.45, p = .016; Fig. 3E). Thus, toddlers

165 attribute their own experiences of objects to others when changes in orientation elicit

166 perceptions of different kinds of objects.

167 These experiments provide evidence for a signature limit to early understanding

168 of others’ mental states. When toddlers and an actor viewed the same pictures from

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169 different directions, toddlers attributed their own experiences of pictures to the actor. In

170 contrast, using the same method, pictures, and changes in the actor’s position, we

171 replicated findings that toddlers appreciate that objects that are visible to themselves may

172 be hidden from others15–17,19, who view an array from a different direction, and vice

173 versa. Thus, toddlers appreciate that people may view the same array but detect different

174 objects, but appear not to appreciate that people may experience the same detectable

175 objects differently.

176 This failure is striking, because toddlers’ performance was highly systematic:

177 Toddlers attributed their own experiences of pictures to the actor, even when the actor

178 actively rotated the pictures (Experiment 3), the actor’s actions did not conflict with

179 toddlers’ intrinsic preferences for upright faces (Experiment 4), and the actor’s rotation of

180 pictures changed the kind of object that the picture depicted (Experiment 5).

181 An understanding that the same entity may be experienced differently, by the self

182 and others, is critical to human communication and pedagogy12,13. Toddlers’ failure to

183 appreciate this feature of human social life raises key questions for future research. First,

184 do adult non-human animals show the same limit to their mental state reasoning?

185 Because non-human animals also attend to the orientation of faces26,27, the present

186 experiments introduce methods that can serve to probe the nature and evolutionary

187 origins of this aspect of mental state reasoning.

188 Second, what is the source of this failure? Longstanding research suggests that

189 young children are egocentric, attributing their own experiences to others8,9,21,29.

190 Alternatively, toddlers in our experiments may have been able to appreciate that different

191 people can have different experiences of objects, but lacked the information that allows

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192 human adults to determine when our experiences differ from those of others. Language,

193 in particular, is a primary means by which adults express and share our diverse

194 experiences with others12,13,37. In the present experiments, as in most past research on

195 early goal attribution33,34, the actor did not speak when acting on objects. Because

196 different people’s experiences of objects often coincide, the assumption that others’

197 experiences align with one’s own may be rational in circumstances where one lacks

198 language, or other means, to determine when experiences diverge. By developing a

199 stronger command of language and engaging in conversations with others, children may

200 come to better appreciate others’ experiences. Consistent with this proposal, a large body

201 of research has linked advances in children’s mental state reasoning to advances in their

202 mastery of language38. More broadly, we look forward to research that probes the nature

203 and sources of this developmental limit.

204

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299

300

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301 Figures

A Orientation B Visibility
actor actor actor actor
(i) Observe

observer observer observer observer

from own from own

from actor’s perspective as from actor’s perspective as
perspective observer perspective observer
(ii) Represent

actor observer actor observer

(iii) Predict

actor actor actor actor

observer observer observer observer

302

303 Figure 1. A conceptual schematic of the spatial arrangements in (A) Experiment 1, and (B)

304 Experiment 2. Arrows indicate the target of the actor’s observed action in (i) and the

305 target’s expected action in (iii). Toddlers, in the role of observers (i), first watched an actor

306 who selectively reached for or pointed to pictures that were either of a certain orientation

307 (A) or visibility (B) to the actor, and of the opposite orientation or visibility to themselves.

308 Half of the toddlers observed the actor selectively acting on faces that were upright (A) or

309 visible (B) to him in familiarization, as in the present figure (i); the remaining toddlers

310 observed the actor acting on faces that were directed to the other target. Toddlers might

311 represent the actor’s goal (ii) based on: the perspective of the actor; toddlers’ opposite

312 perspective as observers; both perspectives; or neither perspective. The first two

16
313 representations support different inferences about the goal of the actor’s actions during

314 familiarization, which in turn engender different expectations concerning the actor’s

315 actions at test (iii), after he moves to toddlers’ side of the room where their two perspectives

316 coincide. Light and dark frames depict the action predictions based on the actor’s

317 perspective and toddlers’ own perspective, respectively. If toddlers consider both

318 perspectives equally or neither perspective, no action predictions follow.

319

17
 A Exp. 1: Orientation (Reach) B Exp. 2: Visibility (Point)

familiarization
test

Same-to-Actor Same-to-Toddler Same-to-Actor Same-to-Toddler

320

321 Figure
A Exp. 2. Still frames from
3: Orientation B Exp. 3:the displays of C Experiments
Orientation Exp. 4: Orientation 1 (A) Dand
Exp. 5:2 (B). In both
Orientation
(Rotate, Experimental Condition) (Rotate, Baseline Condition) (Reach, Less Conflict) (Reach, Rabbit-Duck Illusion)
familiarization

322 experiments, the actor first was seated at the back of the room, facing toddlers. In

duck
duck
rabbit

rabbit
323 Experiment 1 (A, top), an actor first reached to pictured faces that were either always

324 upright or inverted to him in familiarization. At test, the actor moved to the front of the

325 room and reached for faces that were in the same orientation, either toduckhimself
rabbit or to
test

326 toddlers, as in familiarization. In Experiment 2 (B, top), the actor first pointed
rabbit
to faces that
rabbit duck duck

327 were Same-to-Actor

either always visibleDifferent-to-Toddler
Same-to-Toddler
or occluded to him inSame-to-Actor
Same-to-Toddler
familiarization. At test,
Different-to-Actor
the actor
Same-to-Actor
moved
Same-to-Toddler

328 to the front and pointed to faces that were of the same visibility, either to himself or to

329 toddlers, as in familiarization. Yellow arrows depict the actor’s movement. Half of the

330 toddlers saw alternating familiarization events in which the actor reached for faces that

331 were upright (A, top) or visible (B, top) to him, as in the still frames above; the remaining

332 toddlers saw videos in which the actor reached for faces that were inverted or occluded to

333 him (not shown). Labels indicate whether the actor’s action at test was consistent with the

334 actor’s actions in familiarization, from the actor’s perspective or toddlers’ perspective; the

335 opposite labels applied when the actor reached for faces that were inverted or occluded to

336 him.

18
 A Exp. 1 Orientation B Exp. 2 Visibility C Exp. 3 Orientation D Exp. 4 Orientation E Exp. 5 Orientation
(Reach) (Point) (Rotate) (Reach, Less Conflict) (Reach)
*β = -0.34 ***ß = 0.48 ß = 0.05 *ß = -0.27

**ß = -0.55
*ß = 0.32 ß = -0.22

337

338 Figure 3. Box plots depicting the time that toddlers looked at the test actions for

339 Experiments 1-5 (A-E). Red diamonds indicate means and connected dots indicate data

340 from individual toddlers. Horizontal lines within boxes indicate medians, boxes indicate

341 interquartile ranges, and whiskers indicate 1.5 times the interquartile range. The beta

342 coefficients (β) indicate standardized effect sizes. Asterisks indicate significant effects

343 (*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001). Data are collapsed across whether the actor’s actions,

344 in familiarization, were directed at upright or inverted faces (Experiments 1 and 4),

345 visible or occluded faces (Experiment 2), or a duck or a bunny (Experiment 5); toddlers’

346 looking times at test did not differ depending on these variables (see SI). Likewise, in

347 familiarization, toddlers did not look differently based on these variables in Experiments

348 1, 4, and 5 (see SI).

19
 Same-to-Actor Same-to-Toddler Same-to-Actor Same-to-Toddler

A Exp. 3: Orientation B Exp. 3: Orientation C Exp. 4: Orientation D Exp. 5: Orientation

(Rotate, Experimental Condition) (Rotate, Baseline Condition) (Reach, Less Conflict) (Reach, Rabbit-Duck Illusion)
familiarization

duck
duck
rabbit

rabbit
test

duck rabbit

duck rabbit duck rabbit

Same-to-Actor Same-to-Toddler Different-to-Toddler Same-to-Toddler Same-to-Actor Different-to-Actor Same-to-Actor Same-to-Toddler

349

350 Figure 4. Still frames from the displays of Experiments 3-5. In Experiment 3’s

351 Experimental Condition, the actor, seated at the back of the room, first rotated pictured

352 faces that were inverted so that they became upright to him (A, top); in the Control

353 Condition, pictures appeared in the same original and final orientations but with no actor

354 present (B, top). Blue arrows indicate that faces will rotate. In Experiment 4 (C, top), the

355 actor, seated on the room’s right side, first reached for faces that were upright or inverted

356 to him (both sideways to toddlers). In Experiment 5 (D, top), the actor, seated

357 alternatingly on the room’s left and right, first reached for pictures appearing as one

358 animal to him and a different animal to toddlers; text within still frames indicates

359 appearances to the actor. In Experiments 4 and 5, half of the toddlers saw the actor reach

360 for pictures that were upright or rabbits to him in familiarization (depicted); the others

361 saw the actor reach for pictures that were inverted or ducks (not shown). Across

362 experiments, at test, the actor moved to the front of the room and reached on alternating

363 trials for pictures at the two orientations. Yellow arrows depict the actor’s movement.

364 Labels indicate whether test actions were consistent from the actor’s perspective, relative

365 to familiarization (A, C, D), or whether rotations were consistent from the toddlers’

20
366 perspective, relative to familiarization (B). Labels were reversed in Experiments 4 and 5,

367 when the actor reached for inverted faces or ducks.

368

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369 Methods

370 Data and Code Availability

371 All experiments’ data, code, and stimuli are hosted on the Open Science

372 Framework (OSF) at https://osf.io/6dvc2/.

373 General Methods

374 The experiments are ordered here for narrative purposes, but were run in the order

375 1, 3, 2, 4, 5. All experiments involve distinct samples of toddlers.

376 Preregistrations. Hypotheses, methods, and analysis plans for all experiments

377 were preregistered on the OSF, and can be found here: https://osf.io/znjm9/.

378 Displays. All the experiments presented 6 familiarization trials, followed by 6 test

379 trials that involved a change in the actor’s position.

380 Familiarization. The familiarization events were designed to provide toddlers

381 with evidence that the goal of an actor, whose perspective initially differed from toddlers’

382 perspective, was to act on pictures of a certain orientation or visibility. In familiarization

383 trials, the actor faced two pictures (human faces in Experiments 1-4; animals in

384 Experiment 5), that differed either in orientation (Experiments 1 and 4-5, and Experiment

385 3’s Experimental Condition) or visibility (Experiment 2), positioned to the actor’s left

386 and right. The two pictures changed in orientation or visibility between trials, and the

387 actor always reached or pointed to pictures of the same orientation or visibility. Three

388 pairs of different pictured faces appeared in familiarization (except in Experiment 5; see

389 below), each appearing once on the left and once on the right on one pair of trials. Thus,

390 only the orientation or visibility of the pictures was diagnostic of the actor’s goal. To

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391 reduce the likelihood that toddlers would attribute communicative intentions to the actor,

392 the actor looked only at the objects throughout these events.

393 In all experiments (except Experiment 3; see below), we counterbalanced the

394 orientation or visibility of the pictures that the actor acted on in familiarization. The actor

395 either preferred upright or inverted faces (Experiments 1 and 4), visible or occluded faces

396 (Experiment 2), or rabbits or ducks (Experiment 5).

397 Test. The test phase served to assess whether toddlers represented the actor’s goal

398 with respect to his or their own perspective. In each test trial, the actor first moved to the

399 front of the room, and faced its center, such that his perspective now coincided with

400 toddlers’ own perspective. Two pictures, differing in orientation or visibility, appeared to

401 the actor’s left and right. In alternating trials, the actor reached or pointed to pictures that

402 were either the same in orientation or visibility to the actor, or different in orientation or

403 visibility to the actor (but the same to toddlers in Experiments 1-3 and 5). We coded

404 toddlers’ looking times, following the actor’s reaching or pointing, as a measure of their

405 expectations for the actor’s actions. If toddlers represented the actor’s goal in

406 familiarization with respect to the actor’s perspective, then toddlers should expect the

407 actor to act on pictures of the same orientation or visibility to himself, and look longer

408 when he does not. If toddlers represented the actor’s goal from their own perspective,

409 they should show the reverse looking preference.

410 In all experiments (except Experiment 5; see below), there were 3 pairs of

411 different pictured faces in test, all different from those in familiarization and each used in

412 one pair of trials. By using different pairs of faces, we aimed to test toddlers’

413 expectations across novel faces.

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414 Coding. In all trials (except familiarization in Experiment 3’s Control Condition;

415 see below), after the actor reached for or pointed to a picture, a bell sounded, the videos

416 looped, and an experimenter (naïve to all events) coded looking time, using the coding

417 program jHab39, until the end of the trial, when toddlers had looked away for 2

418 consecutive seconds, or 30 total seconds had elapsed. (See Supplementary Notes for

419 reliability analyses).

420 Procedure. Across experiments, data collection took place over Zoom video

421 calls. Toddlers sat on highchairs or their caregivers’ laps, and caregivers were instructed

422 to sit quietly, not influence toddlers, and look away from displays at test. Experimenters

423 who were naïve about what events toddlers saw determined exclusions using preset

424 criteria. Toddlers were tested with parental informed consent.

425 Statistical Analyses. Across experiments, we report two-tailed p-values. We used

426 R version 4.0.3 for our analyses40.

427 Experiment 1

428 Participants. Twenty 14- to 15-month-old toddlers (mean age = 14.68 months;

429 range = 13;17 to 15;19; 10 girls, 10 boys) participated. Toddlers viewed displays on

430 laptops (n = 18), a TV (n = 1), or a phone (n = 1). Two more toddlers began the

431 experiment but were excluded due to technical difficulties displaying the events on the

432 toddler’s device (n = 1) or fussiness (n = 1).

433 Sample Size Justification. We had preregistered a sample size of 16 based on

434 power analyses over pilot data, but had less attrition than anticipated, resulting in a

435 sample of 20. Our experiments’ sample sizes are comparable to sample sizes in recent

436 studies on toddlers’ mental state reasoning41,42.

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437 Displays and Procedure. Familiarization trials began with an actor seated at the

438 back of a room, facing toddlers, and two pictured faces on the floor, one upright and one

439 inverted (Fig. 2A). Because the actor faced the camera, the faces were in the opposite

440 orientations to toddlers. The actor repeatedly reached for pictures of a certain orientation

441 to him (upright or inverted, counterbalanced between toddlers).

442 Test trials began with the actor moving to the room’s front and turning around, so

443 that faces that would have been upright to him from his earlier position in familiarization

444 were now inverted, and vice versa. The actor looked down at the faces. In alternating

445 trials, he reached for faces that were either of the same orientation to him (Same-to-Actor

446 trials) or to toddlers as before (Same-to-Toddler trials).

447 Counterbalancing. We counterbalanced the orientation of faces that the actor

448 pointed to (i.e., his preferred orientation) in familiarization (visible/occluded to actor), the

449 location of the face that the actor pointed to in the first trial of each pair of familiarization

450 trials (left/right to actor), and the order of Same-to-Actor trials in test (first/second). The

451 location of the preferred-orientation face at test was the same as the location of the

452 preferred-orientation face in the first trial of each pair of familiarization trials.

453 Statistical Analysis. We ran a mixed-effects model to determine whether toddlers

454 expected the actor to behave consistently from his perspective, or from the perspective of

455 toddlers, in test trials. In this model, the dependent variable was looking time, the fixed

456 effect was trial type (Same-to-Actor/Same-to-Toddler), and participant ID was a random

457 intercept. Because a normal distribution fit the looking time data better than did a

458 lognormal distribution, we did not log-transform the data for the model.

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459 Experiment 2

460 Participants. Thirty-two 14- to 15-month-old toddlers (mean age = 14.84

461 months; range = 13;17 to 15;27; 20 girls, 12 boys) contributed data. Toddlers viewed

462 displays on laptops (n = 31) or a phone (n = 1). One more toddler began the experiment

463 but was excluded due to technical difficulties displaying the events on the toddler’s

464 device.

465 Sample Size Justification. The sample size was based on power analyses over

466 pilot data (see preregistration).

467 Displays and Procedure. Familiarization displays were like those of Experiment

468 1, except that the critical difference in toddlers’ and the actor’s perspectives was based on

469 the visibility, rather than the orientation, of faces. Trials began with two pictured faces on

470 the floor, initially without an actor present. Both faces were inverted to toddlers (and

471 upright from the back of the room). The screen faded to black, and when the room

472 reappeared, one face was blocked with an occluder from toddlers’ perspective, and the

473 other was blocked with an occluder from the back of the room. The screen faded to black

474 again, and the actor appeared, seated facing toddlers such that faces that were visible and

475 occluded to toddlers were occluded and visible, respectively, to the actor.

476 The actor looked at the two sides of the room (in the direction of the visible and

477 occluded faces). Then, the actor pointed either to the face that he could see or to the

478 occluder that hid a face from his view (counterbalanced between toddlers).

479 Test trials began with the actor moving to the front of the room, initially without

480 pictured faces present. Before the actor turned around to face the room’s center, the

481 screen faded to black. When the room reappeared, there were two faces, both upright to

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482 toddlers. The screen faded to black once more, and when the room reappeared, two

483 occluders were present, as in familiarization. The actor turned around, so that faces that

484 would have been visible to him from his position in familiarization were now occluded

485 (as they had been for toddlers in familiarization), and vice versa. He looked to the two

486 sides of the room. In alternating trials, he pointed either to faces that were of the same

487 visibility to him (Same-to-Actor trials) or to toddlers as before (Same-to-Toddler trials).

488 Counterbalancing. Counterbalancing in Experiment 2 was the same as in

489 Experiment 1, except that it was based on the visibility of faces (rather than orientation)

490 and on pointing (rather than reaching).

491 Statistical Analysis. To determine whether toddlers expected the actor to behave

492 consistently from his perspective, or from the perspective of toddlers, in Experiment 2’s

493 test trials, we ran a mixed-effects model exactly like that of Experiment 1, except that we

494 did not include a random slope for subject ID across trial pair because the model

495 including that variable failed to converge.

496 Experiment 3

497 Participants. Forty 14- to 15-month-old toddlers (mean age = 14.71 months;

498 range = 13;12 to 15;21; 18 girls, 22 boys) contributed data to Experiment 3. Toddlers

499 were randomly assigned to either the Experimental Condition (n = 20) or the Control

500 Condition (n = 20) (Figs. 4A and 4B). Toddlers viewed displays on laptops (n = 18), a

501 TV (n = 1), or a phone (n = 1). No toddlers met our exclusion criteria.

502 Sample Size Justification. The sample size was based on power analyses over

503 pilot data and Experiment 1’s data (see preregistration).

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504 Displays and Procedure. Familiarization trials of the Experimental Condition

505 (Fig. 4A) began with the actor at the back of the room, facing toddlers and looking down

506 at two pictured faces: one upright and one inverted to him. The actor repeatedly reached

507 for faces that were inverted to him (and upright to toddlers), and rotated them 180° so

508 that they became upright to him (and inverted to toddlers).

509 The Control Condition’s familiarization trials (Fig. 4B) were like those of the

510 Experimental Condition in timing and sound, but the actor was absent. Instead, the screen

511 faded to black, and a bell sounded when the actor in the Experimental Condition would

512 have rotated one face, corresponding to the moment that the experimenter began coding

513 looking time. Then the room reappeared, revealing that one picture (the one that was

514 initially upright to toddlers) was now inverted to toddlers. Thus, toddlers in the

515 Experimental and Control Conditions saw the same faces, at the same starting and final

516 orientations.

517 In test trials, the actor reached for faces that were inverted to rotate them upright

518 as he had, from his perspective, in the Experimental Condition’s familiarization (Same-

519 to-Actor trials) or upright to invert them, as he had from the toddlers’ perspective, in the

520 Experimental Condition’s familiarization (Same-to-Toddler trials). In the Control

521 Condition, because the actor was absent from familiarization, we instead refer to test

522 trials by whether the face that rotated was the same in initial orientation to toddlers as

523 those that rotated in familiarization: Same-to-Toddler and Different-to-Toddler trials.

524 Although these labels differ, the test events in the two conditions are the same.

525 Counterbalancing. Counterbalancing for Experiment 3 was the same as in

526 Experiment 1, except that there was no actor in the Control Condition’s familiarization,

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527 and in the Experimental Condition, the actor only reached for and rotated faces that were

528 initially inverted to him in familiarization.

529 Statistical Analysis. To determine whether toddlers expected the actor to act on

530 pictured faces that were upright or inverted to the actor in Experiment 3’s test trials, and

531 whether that expectation differed by condition, we ran a mixed-effects model. In the

532 mixed-effects model, the dependent variable was looking time; the fixed effects were

533 Test Trial type (Same-to-Toddler/Other), Condition (Experimental/Control), and the

534 interaction between trial type and condition; subject ID was a random intercept; and there

535 was a random slope for subject ID across trial pair (1/2/3). Fixed effects were centered.

536 Because a normal distribution fit the looking time data better than did a lognormal

537 distribution, we did not log-transform the data for the model. (To examine whether low-

538 level features of displays impacted toddlers’ expectations, Same-to-Actor trials were

539 treated as Different-to-Toddler trials to compare the two conditions more directly.)

540 Because the interaction was significant (see Supplementary Notes), we conducted

541 posthoc pairwise tests, correcting for multiple comparisons using Holm’s method, to

542 assess the effect of trial type by condition.

543 Experiment 4

544 Participants. Twenty-four 14- to 15-month-old toddlers (mean age = 14.80

545 months; range = 13;18 to 15;26; 11 girls, 13 boys) contributed data to Experiment 4.

546 Toddlers viewed displays on laptops (n = 20), tablets (n = 3), or a desktop (n = 1). No

547 toddlers met our exclusion criteria.

548 Sample Size Justification. We had run a pilot experiment using the procedure of

549 Experiment 4, but the pilot data were not conducive to power analyses because they

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550 suggested that there was no effect of trial type. We therefore based our sample size on

551 power analyses over data from Experiment 2, in which toddlers demonstrated sensitivity

552 to the actor’s perspective.

553 Displays and Procedure. Displays and procedures were like those of Experiment

554 1, except that the actor in familiarization was seated on the room’s right side, facing

555 pictured faces that were upright and inverted to him in the room’s center, but both

556 sideways to toddlers (Fig. 4C). As in Experiment 1, the actor always reached for faces of

557 a certain orientation to himself.

558 In test trials, as in Experiment 1, the actor moved to the front of the room, and in

559 alternating trials, reached either for faces in the same orientation to himself, or for faces

560 in a different orientation to himself. Because both orientations of the faces were novel for

561 toddlers relative to familiarization, we refer to the trial types as “Same-to-Actor” and

562 “Different-to-Actor”, respectively.

563 Counterbalancing. Counterbalancing for Experiment 4 was the same as in

564 Experiment 1, except that the actor was on the right side rather than the back of the room

565 in familiarization.

566 Statistical Analysis. To determine whether toddlers expected the actor to behave

567 consistently from his perspective in Experiment 4’s test trials, we first ran a frequentist

568 mixed-effects model (as in our earlier experiments). This mixed-effects model was like

569 that of Experiment 1, except that the trial types were Same-to-Actor and Different-to-

570 Actor and the data were log-transformed before inclusion into the model because a

571 lognormal distribution fit the data better than did a normal distribution.

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572 Given the null finding of an effect of trial type, we conducted a Bayesian mixed-

573 effects model43 to probe this null finding further, with default, uninformative priors and

574 with the same specifications as our frequentist model.

575 Experiment 5

576 Participants. Twenty-four 14- to 15-month-old toddlers (mean age = 14.54

577 months; range = 13;10 to 15;25; 10 girls, 14 boys) contributed data to Experiment 5. All

578 toddlers viewed displays on laptops. One more toddler began the experiment but was

579 excluded due to technical difficulties displaying the events on the toddler’s device.

580 Sample Size Justification. The sample size was based on power analyses over

581 pilot data (see preregistration). We did not base it on our earlier experiments, given that

582 the stimuli differed greatly.

583 Displays and Procedure. All trials depicted an actor in a room reaching for

584 pictures that elicit the rabbit-duck illusion: an image that looks like a rabbit in one

585 orientation, but a duck upon being rotated 90° (Fig. 4D).

586 In familiarization trials, an actor sat alternatingly on the left and right sides of a

587 room, where there were two pictures (one oriented like a rabbit, one like a duck to the

588 actor). We deliberately made the pictures mirror reflections of each other, so that the

589 picture that looked like a rabbit to the actor looked instead like a duck to toddlers, and

590 vice versa, due to differences in perspectives between toddlers and the actor. Because the

591 rabbit-duck illusion is asymmetrical, it was necessary that the pictures reflect each other,

592 or else toddlers and the actor would not simultaneously see each picture as different

593 animals.

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594 The actor always reached in familiarization for pictures in a certain orientation to

595 himself. The two pictures differed in color (orange/blue), to help toddlers distinguish

596 between them. We intentionally made the actor alternate between the room’s two sides in

597 familiarization; he therefore reached for pictures in the same orientation regardless of its

598 color and its side relative to himself.

599 In test trials, the actor moved to the front of the room, and in alternating trials,

600 reached for pictures in the same orientation to himself (Same-to-Actor), or for pictures

601 that were in the same orientation to the toddlers (Same-to-Toddler).

602 Counterbalancing. Counterbalancing for Experiment 5 was the same as in

603 Experiment 1, except that the picture appeared as a duck or a rabbit (rather than as

604 upright or inverted) to the actor. Additionally, we counterbalanced the location where the

605 actor reached for pictures in the first and third pairs of familiarization trials (front/back of

606 room, with the location in the second pair being opposite to this). For all toddlers, the

607 picture appearing as a rabbit to the actor was blue when he was on the room’s right side,

608 orange when he was on the left side of the room, and blue when he was at the front of the

609 room. Importantly, throughout familiarization, the actor reached for pictures on his left

610 and right in equal frequency, and for pictures in different colors in equal frequency.

611 Statistical Analysis. To determine whether toddlers expected the actor to behave

612 consistently from his perspective, or from the perspective of toddlers, in Experiment 5’s

613 test trials, we ran a mixed-effects model exactly like that of Experiment 1.

614

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615 Acknowledgments

616 We thank the families who participated, the Cambridge Writing Group, for feedback on

617 an early proposal, Bill Pepe, Cristina Sarmiento, Lauren Salmans, and Delaney Caldwell

618 for research assistance and help with data coding, Michael Gajda for acting in stimuli,

619 and Hyowon Gweon and the Stanford Social Learning Lab for sharing protocols to

620 facilitate online testing. This material is based on work supported by the Center for

621 Brains, Minds, and Machines, funded by National Science Foundation STC Award CCF-

622 1231216, by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Award CW3013552, and by a

623 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship under award 752-

624 2020-0474.

625 Author Contributions

626 B.W. and E.S. developed the experimental concept and design; B.W. created

627 stimuli and performed data collection and analysis; B.W. drafted the manuscript; and E.S.

628 provided critical feedback and revisions to the manuscript.

629

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