Sentential complements and false belief understanding in Chinese Mandarin-speaking preschoolers: A training study.

Highlights: [•] We trained Mandarin-speaking Chinese children with poor false belief performance under four conditions. [•] Children trained with sentential complement with communication verbs and false representation performed significantly better on false-belief post-tests than those in control group. [•] Children in the false representation training group did not show concomitant improvements in the sentential complement tests. [•] Explicit false belief understanding can emerge even when children have little competence with sentential complement constructions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]