Abstract
Ruffman et al. (2023) put head cameras on children aged 6 to 25 months and found that children witnessed 146.5 behavioural repetitions per hour (e.g. drinking from a cup repeatedly, washing a dish and placing it on a rack). This would result in more than 560,000 repetitions in an infant's waking time in their first year of life. We argued that this environment would help children to learn to predict behaviours initially given infants' very good statistical learning ability, and later to understand mental states (because behaviours are based on mental states). This view has been referred to as minimalism. However, Li and Vasil (2025) provided an extensive critique of Ruffman et al. (2023) and minimalism in general, arguing for mentalism (the idea that infants understand mental states). Herein, we respond to these criticisms, point-by-point, and conclude that minimalism provides a plausible account of infants' early understanding.