| Summary: | A study was conducted to examine whether various processes might be at play during pretence understanding by investigating breakdowns of performance in participants with acquired brain damage. Data were obtained from two experiments. In the first, patients with frontal or parietal lesions and adults without neurological problem categorized videos of pretend and real actions. In the second, participants viewed videos of real intentional actions, real accidental actions, and pretend actions. Findings revealed that parietal patients had specific difficulties when identifying pretend actions, and both parietal and frontal patients were more incapable than controls in understanding the intentional nature of pretense. Findings indicated that parietal lesions, and particularly lesions to the temporo–parietal junction, hampered the ability to discriminate pretend from real actions, although the discrimination of intentional from unintentional actions was not necessarily affected. Findings suggested that spared ability to discriminate pretend actions from real actions and intentional actions from accidental actions did not provide a comprehensive conceptual understanding of the intentional nature of pretense. Findings are discussed in detail.
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