Self‐other asymmetries in young children's talk about the mind

Young children's spontaneous production of mental state utterances involving want , know , and think differed markedly depending on the target of the utterance. Whereas children's affirmations and denials mostly pertained to their own mental states rather than those of others, their questions mostly pertained to the mental states of others rather than their own. This asymmetry was evident for all three mental state verbs, and among both English‐speaking and Mandarin‐speaking children. By implication, children enjoy some form of special access to their own mental states but presume no such special access to the mental states of other people.