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The Relational Significance of Misguided Actions: A Critical Review of the Early Integration Between False Belief and Emotion Understanding

The Relational Significance of Misguided Actions: A Critical Review of the Early Integration Between False Belief and Emotion Understanding

Zeynep Busra Ozden

  •  Year : 2025
  •  Vol : 2
  •  Issue : 2
  •  Page : 139-150
Traditional developmental research suggested a significant lag between the emergence of false belief understanding and its integration with emotion understanding. This critical review argues that such findings resulted from a combination of high computational loads in verbal tasks, a lack of ecological validity in decontextualized narratives, and a conceptual tendency to treat emotions as retrospective outcomes of a situation rather than as informative signals that help decode it. By synthesizing research utilizing implicit measures, such as looking time, proactive helping, and spontaneous facial expressions, a more coherent developmental timeline emerges. This review proposes that the early competence observed in the second year of life is best understood by viewing emotions as "relational signifiers" that highlight the relational significance of an agent's goals and constraints. Under this framework, children’s social competence is grounded in a bidirectional link: while beliefs inform emotional expectations, emotional displays serve as diagnostic cues for resolving social ambiguity and reasoning about hidden mental states.
Cite this Article As : Özden, Z. B. (2025). The relational significance of misguided actions: A critical review of the early integration between false belief and emotion understanding. UPUES Journal, 2(2), 139-150.

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The Relational Significance of Misguided Actions: A Critical Review of the Early Integration Between False Belief and Emotion Understanding, Review Article,
, Vol. 2 (2)
Received : 23.12.2025, Accepted : 25.12.2025 , Published Online : 29.12.2025
UPUES Journal
ISSN: ;
E-ISSN: 3108-4877 ;
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