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The aim of this study was to examine the effect of positive effort belief (PEB) (“You need to make an effort to get good marks”) on the mentalistic reasoning of 6- to 8-year-olds using false belief second-order theory of mind (2ToM) tasks. We administrated two classic 2ToM tasks (change of location), four novel 2ToM tasks (change of belief) comprising two normative (PEB) and two non-normative (school materials) tasks, and a questionnaire of effort belief to 140 children aged 6 to 8 years. Our results showed that total scores on non-normative 2ToM tasks were significantly higher than those on the classic change of location task. In addition, the children in our study did not employ more mentalistic attributions in normative tasks compared to non-normative tasks as expected. However, they used significantly fewer mentalistic explanations in normative 2ToM tasks compared to non-normative 2ToM tasks. This result could be due to children’s non-existent or limited grasp on mentalist explanations (e.g., because the friend does not know that A has changed their belief), while deontic/normative explanations (e.g., because you need to make an effort to be good at school) were readily available in the children’s minds. Additional interpretations are discussed to explore how children use recursive reasoning in social situations at school.
