Seven-month-old babies can 'read minds': Scientific American

Seven-month-old babies can 'read minds': Scientific American: "Babies as young as seven months old may be able to take into account the thoughts and beliefs of other people, according to a paper published December 23 in Science. Called 'theory of mind,' this ability is central to human cooperation.

The finding provides evidence for the earliest awareness in infants so far of others' perspectives, says lead author Ágnes Kovács, a developmental psychologist at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. The research team made the discovery by measuring a simple behavior--how long infants stare at a scene--in experiments that did not require infants to explicitly assess others' thoughts or predict their actions.

Although many past studies have suggested that the ability to infer another person's viewpoint does not arise until the age of four, scientists demonstrated in 2005 and 2007, respectively, that 15- and 13-month-old infants can, in some situations, comprehend the beliefs of others."