Children's explanations for self-presentational behaviour

Previous research has underestimated children's capacity to understand the self-presentational behaviour of other people. We argue from recent research in mental-state understanding that 8-year-olds should be able to attribute self-presentational motives in older to explain others' behaviour. In the present study, children aged 6 to 11 years heard stories involving emotion-masking displays and were then asked to explain the motivations for those displays. Results supported our prediction.