 To see why, notice that Telling requires that the speaker and the hearer both have the cognitive capacity to recognize that other people have higher-order mental states, i.e., both parties must be cognitively capable of recognizing that people have mental states about other people’s mental states. For instance, in order for you to satisfy all of the conditions in Telling, you must believe (that your friend intends [that you believe (that your friend is intending [that you acquire an epistemic reason for belief because you recognizes that you friend is intending to offer one)]). But decades of literature in developmental psychology suggest that for neuro-typical children, the ability to recognize that people have higher order mental states is not acquired until around five or six years old. Moreover, this literature also suggests that for people with autism, the ability to do this is not acquired until much later in life, if it is acquired at all. Thus, insofar as young children and people with autism can acquire testimonial justification from their parents, say, then the Assurance View should be rejected on the grounds that it problematically excludes these people from acquiring something of epistemic importance. See Leonard (2016).