Naïve epistemics: A theory of accurate and error-prone mental state reasoning

Effective communication depends on reasoning about what others know and believe, and failures in executive functioning can disrupt the way adults reason about mental states. No study has revealed errors traceable to mental state reasoning processes, such as failures in interpreting premises, simulating possibilities, and formulating conclusions. We developed such a theory to account for both optimal and error-prone mental state reasoning; to test it, we investigated a family of specific mental state reasoning errors.