What is Theory of mind?
- A well organized understanding of how the mind works and how it influences behavior (Siegler)
- Understanding other people as people who have desires, beliefs and their own interpretation of the world (Smith)
When does ToM develop?
- ToM develops between ages 3 and 5 years of age
- 3 & 4 year old children do not understand that other people have beliefs as well, which guide their actions and that these beliefs can be different from their own
- In short, children do not distinguish between beliefs and objective reality
- Development of False-belief understanding is not discontinuous
- Although preschoolers fail on false-belief they have some understanding of mental states: understanding desires, emotions etc
Criticism on False Belief Tasks
- Not sensitive enough for young children
–> “Where will Sally look for the marble?”
“Where will Sally look for the marble first? - If false belief tasks are presented in a way that facilitate understanding -> some 3-year-olds succeed
- Implicit false belief task
What are the precursors of ToM?
example:
- Face perception & gaze following
- Joint attention
- Pretense
- Visual perspective taking
- Appearance-reality
- Desire
Face perception & Gaze following
- 12 months old: children show surprise when experimenter act on object he did not gaze at
- 18 month olds use gaze to guide object choice
Joint attention
Understanding the focus of another’s attention
- dyadic joint attention:
At 3 months “still-face effect”
At 3 months already very sensitive to few degrees in gaze aversion
- Triadic joint attention: involves a third party
- Starts to emerge around 12 months of age: begin to use own gaze to engage mothers while pointing
- 18 months old reliably determine others focus of attention
- 18 months: use of eye gaze and other directional cues
- 24 months children use gaze to gain info about other’s desire
Pretense
- arises around 1st year
- increases during first two years
- dual representation
- reality
- world of imagination
Desire
- Young infants show what they want through pointing
- 2-year-olds understand people acts in ways that fulfill their desires
- Broccoli experiment
Appearance-reality
- 3-year-olds fail
- 4-year-olds pass
- replicated with many other objects
Level 1- and 2 perspective taking
- Level 1: understanding that another person sees an object only if the person’s eyes are open and directed toward the object (2-and 3-year-olds)
- Level 2: even though both self and others can see the same object it looks different to people viewing it from different perspectives (4- and 5-year-olds)
Two theories about ToM development
- Domain general
- Domain specific
Domain general
development of ToM stems from a general skill which has effect on several different areas: ToM abilities, but also understanding of physical objects, language, etc
Domain specific
development of ToM stems from special knowledge, special processes and mechanisms that only affect ToMskills
Representational mind account
- children with autism fail false-belief tasks but succeed on false photograph task
- -> This suggests that the representational mind account is incorrect
Examples - Domain-Specific Theories
Theory theories (Wellman): The child develops step by step a more complex theory about the mind, includes emotions, joint attention etc. Theory of Mind Module (Baron-Cohen): specific brain mechanism devoted to understanding of other human beings
Deception
involves planting a false belief in another person’s mind, and this is only possible if you realize that other people can have false beliefs
First order belief
the ability to understand another person’s thoughts
second-order belief
the ability to infer what one person thinks about another person’s thoughts
Metarepresentation
an understanding of the distinction between what is being referred to (the referent) and what it is represented as
Only when one understands that representations are not copies of reality that you have the concept of metarepresentation (example: pyramid – different views shows different figures)
Children have two types of representations when they indulge in pretend play
- Primary representation: thinking about the banana as a banana)
- Secondary representation (aka metarepresentations): thinking about the banana as a telephone
Three different techniques to measure theory of mind
- Conversation and playing (pretend play)
- Habituation and preferential looking
- Experimental studies (like broccoli test)
