Two studies were carried out in an attempt to replicate an earlier but controversial set of findings that suggested that young children are able to understand pretence in a mentalistic sense (Hickling, Wellman, & Gottfried, 1997). In Study 1, 65 three-year-olds and 77 four-year-olds were asked to either judge the thoughts of an absent teddy bear, who had not witnessed a change in the original pretence stipulation, or were asked to complete a similar, standard false-belief task. Study 2 repeated the experimental procedures of the first study with 24 three-year-olds and 16 four-year-olds, with the difference that all children had to complete both tasks in a single session. The results obtained across both studies showed that 3-year-olds were unable to correctly judge the discrepant thoughts of the teddy bear, suggesting that young children do not attribute a false belief to another actor during pretend play, and that instead they view pretence in terms of overt action.