{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,24]],"date-time":"2026-09-24T14:03:03Z","timestamp":1790258583093,"version":"4.1.0"},"reference-count":76,"publisher":"Wiley","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]],"date-time":"2026-07-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1783382400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]],"date-time":"2026-07-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1783382400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/doi.wiley.com\/10.1002\/tdm_license_1.1"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004189","name":"Max-Planck-Gesellschaft","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004189","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["onlinelibrary.wiley.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Developmental Science"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,9]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>ABSTRACT<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:label\/>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      Around age four, children in urban, post\u2010industrial societies begin to understand the subjectivity of beliefs and other mental states: they can be true or false, and they are aspectual, representing situations under specific descriptions. These two insights have been found to emerge in tandem, suggesting a shift toward a metarepresentational Theory of Mind. However, as evidence for this shift comes primarily from formally educated, urban, post\u2010industrial societies, its broader generalizability remains speculative. Moreover, standard pretense\u2010heavy false belief tasks may bias conclusions drawn from existing cross\u2010cultural work. In a preregistered, multi\u2010method study, we assessed two versions of false belief tasks (change\u2010of\u2010location and aspectual) in children from two rural Namibian communities (Hai||om,\n                      <jats:italic>N<\/jats:italic>\n                      \u00a0=\u00a065; Khwe,\n                      <jats:italic>N<\/jats:italic>\n                      \u00a0=\u00a035, ages 3\u20139) and an urban German community (Leipzig,\n                      <jats:italic>N<\/jats:italic>\n                      \u00a0=\u00a066, ages 3\u20136). We compared two task formats that differed in their reliance on pretense (a real agent and objects vs. depictions thereof). Task format did not affect Leipzig or Khwe children's performance, but Hai||om children showed a better belief understanding in the realistic task format. Across cultures and task formats, change\u2010of\u2010location and aspectual false belief tasks were robustly linked at the individual level. These results show universality without uniformity: besides variation in overall performance and task format sensitivity, children across diverse cultures show closely aligned performance across belief tasks, consistent with accounts proposing a shared metarepresentational basis of Theory of Mind.\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Summary<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>\n                      <jats:list list-type=\"bullet\">\n                        <jats:list-item>\n                          <jats:p>Standard change\u2010of\u2010location and aspectual false belief tasks are tightly linked at the individual level across rural Namibian (Hai||om and Khwe) and urban German (Leipzig) communities.<\/jats:p>\n                        <\/jats:list-item>\n                        <jats:list-item>\n                          <jats:p>This developmental unity holds despite cross\u2010cultural differences in overt task performance.<\/jats:p>\n                        <\/jats:list-item>\n                        <jats:list-item>\n                          <jats:p>Rural Hai||om children perform better in realistic (versus pretense) tasks, whereas Khwe and Leipzig children show no such task format advantage.<\/jats:p>\n                        <\/jats:list-item>\n                        <jats:list-item>\n                          <jats:p>The findings support a universal but non\u2010uniform emergence of a metarepresentational foundation of belief understanding.<\/jats:p>\n                        <\/jats:list-item>\n                      <\/jats:list>\n                    <\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1111\/desc.70249","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]],"date-time":"2026-07-07T09:21:48Z","timestamp":1783416108000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Developmental Unity and Cultural Variation in Forms of Metarepresentational False Belief Understanding"],"prefix":"10.1111","volume":"29","author":[{"given":"Ljubica","family":"Petrovi\u0107","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology  Leipzig Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Tonico","family":"Deodato","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology  Leipzig Germany"},{"name":"Department of Psychology and Social Work University of Namibia  Windhoek Namibia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Hannes","family":"Rakoczy","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Cognitive Developmental Psychology Georg\u2010Elias\u2010M\u00fcller\u2010Institute of Psychology Georg\u2010August\u2010University  G\u00f6ttingen Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Daniel B. M.","family":"Haun","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology  Leipzig Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2212-4613","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Roman","family":"Stengelin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology  Leipzig Germany"},{"name":"Department of Psychology and Social Work University of Namibia  Windhoek Namibia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"311","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_11_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/S0010\u20100277(98)00030\u20104"},{"key":"e_1_2_11_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1467\u20108624.1991.tb01544.x"},{"key":"e_1_2_11_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.tics.2020.05.007"},{"key":"e_1_2_11_5_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/s44159\u2010024\u201000351\u20108"},{"key":"e_1_2_11_6_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1098\/rspb.2020.1245"},{"key":"e_1_2_11_7_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s13164\u2010022\u201000636\u2010y"},{"key":"e_1_2_11_8_1","unstructured":"Bruno D. 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