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To end 2020, we have today uploaded a preprint of a cross-lab replication effort of our original anticipatory looking study (Southgate, Senju & Csibra, 2007) that has been used as evidence for false belief attribution in toddlers. Like others, we could not replicate the paradigm.
The preprint can be found here: https://osf.io/8vwd7/ via @OSFramework
In our study, the paradigm did not elicit action prediction, nor belief-based action prediction. As I wrote in a commentary in 2018, it was clear from the failed replications by other authors that the paradigm did not serve its intended purpose of eliciting action prediction.
However, here we wanted to run a direct replication, exactly as we had run it in 2007. The study was run in both Copenhagen and Budapest and included two of the original authors.
This is a paradigm that â as my first empirical paper as a post-doc â was very close to my heart and it is personally very disappointing that it does not replicate 
In hindsight, of course the sample size was too small, and we did not find sufficient evidence in the original paper that the paradigm could elicit action prediction. But ultimately we do not know why the paradigm worked in 2007, but not now.
We conclude that this version of the paradigm cannot be used to assess false belief in toddlers, and should not be used as evidence for Theory of Mind abilities in this age group.
I am still puzzled as to why infants in our study do not anticipate actions, but in other versions of the paradigm, both apes and monkeys appear to do so. And it remains the case that there are versions of the paradigm with younger infants that have not yet been replicated.
While this non-replication should be taken as clear evidence that this paradigm is not fit for purpose, it does not speak to the theoretical question about whether infants are sensitive to othersâ false beliefs. There are other studies suggesting that they are.
Finally, we have a lot of hope that the ManyBabies2 project will ultimately clarify whether anticipatory looking â when employed in new and improved stimuli â can be useful for assessing Theory of Mind capacity in infants.
I completely forgot to acknowledge in this thread the people who actually ran the study and did the analysis @dora_kampis @MikolajHernik and Petra KĂĄrmĂĄn. They did the hard work.
