<p>Much ongoing debate concerns the development of social understanding from infancy through preschool. In developmental cognitive science, this has played out most recently in terms of the nature of, and the&#xa0;relationship between, so-called implicit versus explicit Theory of Mind (ToM). However, notions of implicit, explicit, and their relationship, involve underlying assumptions about the nature of representation, knowing, and learning. These assumptions tend to preclude emergence and, thus, do not allow for an adequate notion of implicitness in the first place. A critical survey of different perspectives from developmental cognitive science will be used to illustrate the rich plurality of explanations. The outcome of this survey will be to argue that only action-based approaches can explain the emergence of new forms of knowing and, in so doing, provide the best ontology in town for understanding implicit versus explicit representation. While there are a variety of action-based approaches in the literature, interactivism is the specific action-based approach used for this argument. After presenting the models of interactive knowing, epistemic reflection, and situation convention, the notions of implicit and explicit ToM will be reinterpreted within the interactivist framework. This reinterpretation will then be used to consider some of the replication problems for early-development ToM studies as well as how to rethink the role of folk psychology for (culturally constituted) ToM development.</p>