WHAT MAKES STRATEGIC DECEPTION DIFFICULT FOR CHILDREN - THE DECEPTIONOR THE STRATEGY

Tests of strategic deception are normally assumed to measure children' s understanding of mental representation and to demonstrate 3-year-old 's lack of such understanding. However they also make significant exec utive demands, namely: (a) provisional disengagement from a target obj ect whilst (b) indicating a place where the target is absent. If these executive requirements constitute the core difficulty with strategic deception, young children should continue to fail such tests when ther e is no opponent to deceive but when the executive requirements are un changed. Experiment 1 showed that removing the opponent did not affect the behaviour of 3-year-old subjects: they typically referred to the object location on the first test trial and often continued to do so t hroughout the subsequent 20 trials. Experiment 2 showed that the young er children's difficulty was caused by knowledge of the target's locat ion not by sight of it. We discuss these data in terms of the possibil ity that there may be an executive contribution to the age 3-4 year tr ansition in mental knowledge; but also caution that the role of execut ive factors in strategic deception should ideally be assessed by mecha nical procedures.