Continuity in false belief understanding from 33 to 52 months of age

•A significant longitudinal correlation between toddlers‘ performance on a Low Demands False Belief task and 4-year-olds‘ performance on a Standard False Belief task was observed.•The correlation was independent of language and executive function.•The correlation cannot be attributed to low-level similarities between the two tasks.•The finding supports a high-level conceptual continuity view of False Belief understanding. Conceptual continuity in children’s false belief understanding from toddlerhood to childhood was investigated in a longitudinal study of 75 children. Performance in a low-demands false belief task at 33 months of age was significantly correlated with performance in a content false belief task at 52 months independent of language ability and executive function. In contrast, there was no correlation with performance in a location false belief task, which differed from the “Sally–Anne” format of the low-demands task and was high in executive demands. These findings support the view that explicit false belief understanding may be continuous from toddlerhood to childhood and that developmental change may be characterized in terms of enrichment and increasing stability of core conceptual understanding rather than in terms of fundamental change.