Social orienting predicts implicit false belief understanding in preschoolers

According to the social motivation theory, orienting toward social elements of the environment should be related to sociocognitive abilities, such as theory of mind (ToM), in both typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorder. The objective of the current study was to assess whether social orienting skills predict ToM abilities in preschoolers by using two social orienting tasks (biological motion and face preference) and an implicit false belief task. A total of 38 children, aged 2–4 years, participated in this study. As expected, participants showed a social preference on both tasks measuring social orienting. More importantly, children’s performance on the face preference task predicted their performance on the false belief task, providing the first evidence for a link between social motivation and ToM in preschoolers.