There have been major developments in the understanding of children’s nonhuman concepts, particularly God concepts, within the past two decades, with a body of cross-cultural studies accumulating. Relatively less research has studied those of non-Christian faiths or children’s concepts of popular occult characters. This paper describes two studies, one in Spain and one in England, examining 5- to 10-year-olds’ human and nonhuman agent beliefs. Both settings were secular, but the latter comprised a Muslim majority. Children were given a false-belief (unexpected contents) task in which they were asked to infer about three humans (mother, classmate, teacher), three animals (dog, bear, bird) and three supernatural beings (Superman, fairy, God). Similar false beliefs about humans, with subtle differences in inferences about animals and supernatural beings, were found between the two locations. In London different patterns for God between participants with a family religion, in particular Muslims, and non-affiliates, were identified as well as an association between religious beliefs and practice and inferences about God. Findings are discussed in the light of theory and research on the role of sociocultural inputs in children’s theory of mind development and understanding of agency.

在过去的二十年中，对儿童非人类概念（尤其是上帝概念）的理解有了重大发展，并且积累了许多跨文化研究。相对较少的研究是对非基督教信仰或儿童的流行神秘人物概念进行的研究。本文介绍了两项研究，一项是在西班牙，另一项是在英国，研究了5至10岁儿童的人类和非人类代理信念。两种情况都是世俗的，但后者占穆斯林的多数。给孩子一个虚假的信仰（意外的内容）任务，其中要求他们推断三个人（母亲，同学，老师），三个动物（狗，熊，鸟）和三个超自然生物（超人，仙女，上帝） 。关于人类的类似错误信念，在两个地点之间发现了关于动物和超自然生物的细微差别。在伦敦，人们发现有家庭宗教的参与者（尤其是穆斯林）和非亲属之间的不同神教模式，以及宗教信仰和实践以及对神的推论之间的联系。研究结果是根据理论和社会文化投入在儿童心理发展和对代理的理解理论中的作用的研究进行讨论的。