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The Sally–Anne Test and Theory of Mind: How Children Understand Other Minds, and What Differs in Autism

In short
Theory of mind is the ability to understand that other people have thoughts and beliefs that can differ from our own and from reality. In 1985, Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan Leslie and Uta Frith showed that this ability develops differently in autistic children, independent of intellectual level.
How the experiment worked
Children watched a scene with two dolls. Sally puts a marble in her basket and leaves. Anne moves the marble to a box. Sally comes back. The question: "Where will Sally look for her marble?" The correct answer is the basket — Sally didn't see the move, so she holds a false belief. Control questions checked that children remembered where the marble had been and where it was now.
Three groups took part: 20 autistic children (mean age about 12, verbal mental age about 5.5), 14 children with Down syndrome (about 11, mental age about 3) and 27 typically developing preschoolers (about 4.5).
Results
  • 85% of typically developing children and 86% of children with Down syndrome passed.
  • Only 20% of autistic children passed, although their mental age was higher than in the other groups.
  • Nearly all answered the control questions correctly: autistic children remembered the events but did not take Sally's belief into account.
Conclusions and significance for developmental psychology
The study proposed that social difficulties in autism reflect differences in theory of mind ("mindblindness") rather than general intellectual disability. The task became one of the most widely used tools in developmental psychology. Later research found that many autistic people pass such tasks with age, especially with strong language skills — pointing to delayed and different developmental pathways rather than a simple absence.
What it means for parents
By around age 4–5, most children understand that someone else can think differently. Before that, "egocentric" answers are normal. If an older child consistently struggles to read others' intentions and feelings, it is worth consulting a specialist.
What it means for professionals
False-belief tasks are a useful part of a comprehensive assessment of social cognition, but not a diagnostic test for autism; results depend on language skills and how questions are phrased. Theory of mind can be supported through talk about thoughts and feelings, joint play and storybook reading.
References
  • Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a "theory of mind"? Cognition, 21(1), 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(85)90022-8
  • Happé, F. G. E. (1995). The role of age and verbal ability in the theory of mind task performance of subjects with autism. Child Development, 66(3), 843–855. https://doi.org/10.2307/1131954
  • Wellman, H. M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false belief. Child Development, 72(3), 655–684. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00304
  • Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition, 13(1), 103–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(83)90004-5
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