grasping them. And so on. In many situations our intuitive systems
produce precise inferences (about the meaning of a sentence, the
point of a joke, the morally repulsive nature of an action) that escape
children. So it is almost impossible not to represent young children as
adults minus some important abilities (instead of seeing them, for
instance, as aliens with a very different worldview).
These common beliefs illustrate several important facts about
mental functioning: First, to avoid confusion we should always be
careful to distinguish between the implicitprocesses of our inference
systems on the one hand and our explicitor reflective representations
on the other. What happens in the mental basement is not accessible, [305]
it does not consist of sentences, so we cannot be aware of the processes
involved. For instance, most adults, especially caregivers, adjust their
speech when talking to young children, using a restricted lexicon and
simpler syntax. Even ten-year-olds are known to use simplified utter-
ances when addressing their younger siblings. (In fact most people
greatly underestimate toddlers' linguistic capacities, but that is
another question.) Also, most parents walking in a street with their
children automatically scan their visual environment and identify vari-
ous sources of hazard for their offspring. The sight of a large dog
coming toward them or of a truck approaching will trigger a specific
emotional response and probably make them grasp the child's hand
more firmly. But all this has happened quickly and automatically,
because of intuitive expectations. In many situations our minds deliver
inferences about children implying that they are immature. But then it
is only in some circumstances that we actually make all this explicit in
the form of a mental statement such as "Children are undeveloped
versions of adults."
Second, what is contained in the explicit thought—what we usually
call a "belief”—is very often an attempt to justify or explain the intu-
itions we have as a result of implicit processes in the mental basement.
It is an interpretationof (or a report on) these intuitions. We all behave
toward children in a way that is different from our interaction with
adults. The reason for that is that we have intuitions about children's
mental states. Seeing a two-year-old, we cannot help assuming that
she has certain limitations. This prompts us to say "yes" when people
ask us "Are children less competent than adults?" It would be strange
and unrealistic to think that the mental processes go the other way
around, that we start with some explicit beliefs about children's imma-
turity and then adapt our behavior as a consequence. In fact there is a
WHYBELIEF?