Theory of mind develops around what age range according to the material?

• A. 2-5 years
• B. 6-8 years
• C. 0-1 year
• D. 10-12 years

Answer: (A)

Theory of mind is the ability to understand that other people have their own thoughts, beliefs, and desires that can differ from your own. This understanding begins in early childhood. The material places its development in the preschool years, roughly between ages two and five, with a notable milestone around four to five years when children start to realize that others can hold false beliefs. This is often illustrated by false-belief tasks like the Sally-Anne task. The older age ranges reflect more advanced perspective-taking and reasoning about beliefs, not the initial emergence. The earliest period (0-1 year) is when these explicit mental-state attributions haven’t yet developed. So the best fit for when theory of mind develops is the early childhood window of about two to five years.