This paper presents a conversation with Carol Dweck, the author of "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success" (Random House, 2006). She serves as the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Science and is the recipient of…

Studies with infants show divergence between performance on theory of mind tasks depending on whether "direct" or "indirect" measures are used. It has been suggested that direct measures assess a flexible but cognitively demanding ability to reason about the minds of others, whereas indirect measures assess distinct processes…

Five-year-olds, 5 1/2-year-olds, 6-year-olds, and adults were tested for the presence of two intuitions about thinking hypothesized to be part of the adult theory of mind (a) when engaged in a mentally demanding activity, a person's thinking will be directed toward that activity, and (b) when the activity is not mentally demanding, the person's…