Abstract
Research on theory of mind has increased for the last twenty years. Many researchers have refined on the "false belief" task in order to demonstrate that younger children can understand the representational mind. Nevertheless, they have not deliberated how the self is differentiated from the other and how self/other knowledge is acquired. This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical studies on young children's "temporally extended self"(Neisser, 1988) and its relation to self/other understanding in terms of temporal perspectives. It starts by highlighting children's understanding of the connection between the past and the present self. Then it is argued that, if made a few modifications, delayed self-recognition task should be an adequate one to assess the "attitude toward the absent objects". Secondly, it is presumed that other's temporally extended self is understood later than one's own. Finally, this paper proposes a new version of "Sally-Ann" task, which examines children's abilities to understand temporal change of other's mind.
