Children's Understanding of Others' Minds

Question 1

what is theory of mind?

Answer 1

the capacity to attribute different mental states to others to predict or explain behaviour, by inferring thoughts, intentions, emotions, and desires

Question 2

how did piaget measure theory of mind?

Answer 2

found egocentric speech during the preoperational stage (2-7y) and socialised speech (7y+)

Question 3

egocentric speech

Answer 3

children do not attempt to understand other points of view

Question 4

socialised speech

Answer 4

children attempt to understand the hearer

Question 5

what did piaget see social development as?

Answer 5

a domain general view of development, caused by an inability to decentre

Question 6

three mountain task

Answer 6

required children to differentiate between perspectives, and this was passed between 3-5y

Question 7

what might the three mountain task confound?

Answer 7

perspective taking and spatial reasoning, rather than genuine social development

Question 8

false belief task

Answer 8

focused on children’s ability to differentiate between others’ mental states

Question 9

results of false belief task

Answer 9

• predicts the probability of children passing around 44 months
• performance shows discontinuity and stability

Question 10

what research followed after the false belief task?

Answer 10

research into individual differences and the prognostic significance for children’s social lives

Question 11

what did baron-cohen argue about mindreading?

Answer 11

it is a result of a specialised set of modules with no environmental influence, as it is universal and documented in all cultures

Question 12

evidence of cultural influences

Answer 12

children in hong kong pass around 70 months

Question 13

baron-cohen and leslie argued…

Answer 13

TOM is an innate, domain-specific skill to handle social situations, as children are hard-wired to track the mental states of others

Question 14

where does baron-cohen’s research come from?

Answer 14

research into autism, as autistic children struggled with TOM tasks

claimed the heritability of autism must mean TOM is innate

Question 15

what did baillargeon design?

Answer 15

a violation of expectations paradigm which removed extraneous demands of language skills and working memory

Question 16

violation of expectations

Answer 16

infants were shown four different scenarios- green/yellow true belief and green/yellow false belief

Question 17

results of violation of expectations

Answer 17

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

Question 18

criticism of baillargeon

Answer 18

• two possible systems for mindreading
• evidence of behavioural rules
• implicit knowledge does not equal explicit understanding
• recent failures to replicate findings

Question 19

what did hughes and cutting (1999) find in their twin studies?

Answer 19

inherited DNA differences exert greater influence on variation in TOM at age 3 than at age 5

Question 20

different developmental theories of TOM

Answer 20

• ‘theory’ theory
• social-cultural accounts

Question 21

‘theory’ theory

Answer 21

• constructivist, stepwise progression as children are viewed as active agents who hypothesise about behaviour
• environmental patterns update TOM

Question 22

what does ‘theory’ theory believe?

Answer 22

children must master diverse desires and beliefs, knowledge access, false beliefs, and hidden emotions

Question 23

social-cultural accounts

Answer 23

• 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

Question 24

consequence of using mental language with children

Answer 24

may cause them to pass tasks at an earlier stage, showing caregiver-child interactions are crucial

Question 25

mind-mindedness

Answer 25

can predict children’s TOM by a proclivity to view others as individuals with their own thoughts

Question 26

what did mentalistic descriptions of children correlate with?

Answer 26

their TOM

Question 27

what can remove the influence of genetic factors to see if environmental influences can enhance TOM?

Answer 27

allocating children to intervention and training studies

Question 28

what occured in those allocated to the conversation about mental states?

Answer 28

boosted TOM by discussing the thoughts/feelings of characters