Abstract
The ability to attribute beliefs to others (mentalization) and the ability to perform a disjunctive syllogism share something in common. To believe that [Sally believes that p], one must be able to think p without judging p to be true. To believe that [p or q], you have to be able to think p and think q without judging p to be true and q to be true. Developmental psychology's dual investigation of the ontogeny of the ability to attribute beliefs to others and to perform a disjunctive syllogism in human children has produced discordant, if not contradictory, experimental results that need to be reconciled. Results differ according to whether the tests used are verbal or non-verbal. I propose to reconcile the results (i) by admitting the philosophical distinction between judiciative force and propositional content deemed ;(ii) by assuming that non-verbal test results are reliable indices of cognitive capacity ;(iii) by exploring the pragmatic challenges inherent in verbal tests.
