Why Three-Year-Olds Forget They Were Wrong: The Candy-Box Experiment and False Belief

In short

Alison Gopnik and Janet Astington found that three-year-olds cannot recall even their own earlier false belief — they insist they "always knew" the truth. By age 5 this ability appears, together with understanding other people's false beliefs.

How the experiment worked

Children aged 3–5 were shown deceptive objects — for example, a candy box that actually held pencils, or a sponge that looked like a rock. The child first said what it was, usually wrongly. Then the truth was revealed, and three kinds of questions followed:

Representational change: "When you first saw the box, what did you think was inside?"
Another's false belief: "What will your friend, who hasn't looked inside, think is in it?"
Appearance–reality: "What does it look like — and what is it really?"

Results

Most 3-year-olds said they had thought "pencils" from the start; most 5-year-olds did not make this error.
The question about their own past thoughts was no easier — in fact harder — than the one about another person's.
Performance across the three tasks was interrelated, suggesting a single developing understanding.

Conclusions and significance for developmental psychology

The results contradicted the idea that children understand their own minds first and others' later. Between 3 and 5, children seem to build a general representational understanding of mind: a thought is a representation of the world that can be wrong — for oneself and for others alike. The study became a cornerstone of the "theory theory": children, like scientists, revise their theories of the mind.

What it means for parents

When a three-year-old insists they "knew all along", they are not lying — they genuinely cannot hold their earlier belief in mind. Don't shame them for it. Surprise games and remarks like "You thought there were sweets? So did I!" help.

What it means for professionals

Representational-change and appearance–reality tasks complement the Sally–Anne test in assessing preschoolers' social cognition. Question wording and the child's language skills strongly affect results.

References

Flavell, J. H., Flavell, E. R., & Green, F. L. (1983). Development of the appearance-reality distinction. Cognitive Psychology, 15(1), 95–120. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(83)90005-1
Gopnik, A., & Astington, J. W. (1988). Children's understanding of representational change and its relation to the understanding of false belief and the appearance-reality distinction. Child Development, 59(1), 26–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1988.tb03192.x
Gopnik, A., & Wellman, H. M. (1992). Why the child's theory of mind really is a theory. Mind & Language, 7(1–2), 145–171. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1992.tb00202.x
Perner, J., Leekam, S. R., & Wimmer, H. (1987). Three-year-olds' difficulty with false belief: The case for a conceptual deficit. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5(2), 125–137. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1987.tb01048.x

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