Desire, decoupling, and factive mentalizing

Why do we find it easier to attribute knowledge than belief? A promising answer suggests that attributing belief requires representations with content that can come apart from reality, whereas attributing knowledge does not. However, this account fails to generalize to desire attribution. Like belief, desire can diverge from the world, yet research suggests that attributing desire is fast, easy, and early developing—much more like attributing knowledge than belief. I propose an alternative explanation, the efficient recovery account, which explains differences between knowledge, belief, and desire attribution in terms of processing efficiency rather than representational content.