Do Adults Show a Curse of Knowledge in False-Belief Reasoning? A Robust Estimate of the True Effect Size
Ryskin and Brown-Schmidt ran seven experiments with 3,074 participants to re-estimate an earlier false-belief finding in which adults make more egocentric errors when the answer based on their own knowledge seems plausible. The effect pointed the same way as in the original but was less than half its size: a knowledge effect of d = 0.20 against 0.469 in the original. The authors note the original study had low power for an effect of this size and suggest the effect may be too small to matter much for real-world perspective-taking.
Ryskin and Brown-Schmidt ran seven experiments with 3,074 participants to re-estimate an earlier false-belief finding in which adults make more egocentric errors when the answer based on their own knowledge seems plausible. The effect pointed the same way as in the original but was less than half its size: a knowledge effect of d = 0.20 against 0.469 in the original. The authors note the original study had low power for an effect of this size and suggest the effect may be too small to matter much for real-world perspective-taking.
Written from the abstract and article body, PLOS ONE, 2026-10-31.
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Ryskin, R. A., & Brown-Schmidt, S. (2014). Do adults show a curse of knowledge in false-belief reasoning? A robust estimate of the true effect size. PLoS ONE, 9(3), e92406. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0092406