Does friendship with a target influence children's theory of mind performance?

Theory of mind refers to the ability to interpret someone else’s thoughts, intentions, and feelings and it is an immensely important skill for social situations. Previous research has shown that children’s theory of mind performance can differ depending on the characteristics of the target they are thinking about. This study examines the relationship between a child’s friendship preference for a target and their ability to take their perspective in a false-belief task. We predicted that friendship with the target would be associated with worse performance on a false belief task. 164 children between the ages of 3 and 13 participated in this study, in which they performed a false belief task about a character that they either chose as their preferred friend or did not choose. The results indicated that friendship preference was not a significant predictor of false belief performance. Age also did not significantly influence false belief performance.