Running head: CHILDREN'S ATTRIBUTIONS OF BELIEFS

Children's Attributions 13

question about behavior - “Where would agent X look for object Y?” instead of “Where would
agent X think the object is located?”

5. Results

Answers were coded as 1 when children said “tortillas” and 0 when they said “shorts.”
The percentage of children answering “tortillas” in each age group for the doll and God is shown
in figure 3.

FIGURE 3 ABOUT HERE.

The answers for the doll showed a statistically significant positive correlation with age
[r(46) = .341]. Therefore, as age increased, Maya children were more likely to attribute false
beliefs to the doll. For example, 33% of the 4-year-olds said that the doll would think tortillas
were in the container compared to 77% of 7-year-olds. In contrast, children treated God
differently from the doll - as in the US, no significant correlation was detected between answers
for God and age [r(46) = .066]. A Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks Test for matched pairs comparing
“tortillas” responses found significant differences between God and the doll for 5-year-olds [z = -
2.000, p = .046, N = 12] and 7-year-olds [z = -2.449, p = .014, N = 13], but not for 4- and 6-year
olds.

When looking at the results, some patterns become apparent. The human line follows the
same developmental course in both samples, but the Maya children seem to reliably pass the task
about a year later than the American children. In the Maya sample, the difference between God

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