The signature of inhibition in theory of mind: children's predictions of behavior based on avoidance desire.

Theory-of-mind reasoning may require inhibitory processing, a view for which we provide new, more direct, evidence. Our research capitalizes on the lingering property of inhibition: After a response is inhibited, it temporarily becomes more difficult to select than uninhibited responses. In two experiments, 3-year-olds predicted to which of three buckets a girl would go, given a desire to avoid one (e.g., the red one). When next predicting where a boy would play, children were biased against the location the girl had avoided. However, predictions for the boy were unbiased when not preceded by predictions for the girl. These findings suggest that preschoolers predict behavior based on avoidance desires by inhibiting the target to be avoided, as well as that the inhibition lingers, reducing the target's accessibility for subsequent predictions.