Factive Mentalizing and the Attribution of Desire Akshan deAlwis, Washington University Research on the extent of mentalizing – attributing and tracking the mental states of other minds – is highly heterogeneous. Some research indicates that mentalizing is fast, easy, and early developing, while other research indicates that it is slow, hard, and late developing. The Factive Mentalizing View (Philips & Norby 2019; Philips et al.