Running head: CHILDREN'S ATTRIBUTIONS OF BELIEFS

Children's Attributions 11

FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE.

However, there is no available cross-cultural evidence that addresses this question. In the next
section, we present data on a similar false-belief task run with a sample of Yukatek Maya
children, in order to provide a test of these theoretical predictions.

4. Methods

The Maya sample consisted of 48 children divided in four age groups: eleven 4-year-olds
(4,0-4,11), twelve 5-year-olds (5,0-5,11), twelve 6-year-olds (6,0-6,11), and thirteen 7-year-olds
(7,0-7,10). Twenty-six children were male, and twenty-two female. The experimenter piloted the
protocol with some 3-year-olds, but, since most of them seemed to have difficulty in
concentrating long enough, they were dropped from the sample. The children resided in four
small rural villages in the Quintana Roo state in the Yucatan peninsula (Southeastern Mexico).
The overwhelming majority of people living in the rural interior of Quintana Roo are ethnic
Maya.

The children generally began attending preschool when they were four or five years old,
and started primary school when they turned six. Both the preschool and the primary school offer
bilingual education, in Spanish and Yukatek Mayan. Although many individuals below the age
of 50 are reasonably proficient in Spanish, the favored language in the domestic environment is
Yukatek. For this reason, most of the children who enter preschool are virtually monolingual in
this language. All children were interviewed in Yukatek by a native speaker, who has

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