Abstract

The study examined persuasive strategies used by preschool children, with attention both to conversational and to mindreading capacities. Forty-one children participated in the experiment, divided into 4 ages groups (3, 4, 5, 6 years old). A false belief task (Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith, 1985) and two role-playing persuasive tasks (Weiss and Sachs, 1991) were administered. Results show that children with mindreading ability use persuasive strategies more oriented to interlocutor's point of view. Moreover, children adopt different arguments according to the conversational partners (friend/mother) and to the kind of refusal they received.