Babies as young as seven months old may be able to take into account the thoughts and beliefs of other people, according to a paper published December 23 in Science.Called “theory of mind,” this ability is central to human cooperation.

The research team made the discovery by measuring a simple behavior–how long infants stare at a scene–in experiments that did not require infants to explicitly assess others’ thoughts or predict their actions.

If confirmed by future studies, the results would indicate that infants are sensitive to social information and to what others see.