Children's Understanding of Others' Minds Flashcards
what is theory of mind?
the capacity to attribute different mental states to others to predict or explain behaviour, by inferring thoughts, intentions, emotions, and desires
how did piaget measure theory of mind?
found egocentric speech during the preoperational stage (2-7y) and socialised speech (7y+)
egocentric speech
children do not attempt to understand other points of view
socialised speech
children attempt to understand the hearer
what did piaget see social development as?
a domain general view of development, caused by an inability to decentre
three mountain task
required children to differentiate between perspectives, and this was passed between 3-5y
what might the three mountain task confound?
perspective taking and spatial reasoning, rather than genuine social development
false belief task
focused on children’s ability to differentiate between others’ mental states
results of false belief task
- predicts the probability of children passing around 44 months
- performance shows discontinuity and stability
what research followed after the false belief task?
research into individual differences and the prognostic significance for children’s social lives
what did baron-cohen argue about mindreading?
it is a result of a specialised set of modules with no environmental influence, as it is universal and documented in all cultures
evidence of cultural influences
children in hong kong pass around 70 months
baron-cohen and leslie argued…
TOM is an innate, domain-specific skill to handle social situations, as children are hard-wired to track the mental states of others
where does baron-cohen’s research come from?
research into autism, as autistic children struggled with TOM tasks
claimed the heritability of autism must mean TOM is innate
what did baillargeon design?
a violation of expectations paradigm which removed extraneous demands of language skills and working memory
violation of expectations
infants were shown four different scenarios- green/yellow true belief and green/yellow false belief
results of violation of expectations
when the actor did something unexpected, children looked for longer. shows evidence of an innate TOM as infants found certain behaviour surprising based on their own mental state
criticism of baillargeon
- two possible systems for mindreading
- evidence of behavioural rules
- implicit knowledge does not equal explicit understanding
- recent failures to replicate findings
what did hughes and cutting (1999) find in their twin studies?
inherited DNA differences exert greater influence on variation in TOM at age 3 than at age 5
different developmental theories of TOM
- ‘theory’ theory
- social-cultural accounts
‘theory’ theory
- constructivist, stepwise progression as children are viewed as active agents who hypothesise about behaviour
- environmental patterns update TOM
what does ‘theory’ theory believe?
children must master diverse desires and beliefs, knowledge access, false beliefs, and hidden emotions
social-cultural accounts
- different ideas can be developed at different stages as it is reliant on experience, meaning development is gradual and uneven
- everyday experiences build up a knowledge of minds
consequence of using mental language with children
may cause them to pass tasks at an earlier stage, showing caregiver-child interactions are crucial
