Cognition And Development: Theory Of Mind

Question 1

What Is Theory Of Mind?

Answer 1

• Our personal understanding of what other people are thinking and feeling.
• ‘Mind Reading.’
• Develops at the age of4.

Question 2

What Is False Belief?

Answer 2

• Understanding that others may hold and act on mistaken (false) beliefs.

Question 3

What Is Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Answer 3

• An umbrella term for a wide range of symptoms.
• All disorders on the spectrum share impairments to three main areas: empathy, social interaction and social imagination.

Question 4

What Is Autism?

Answer 4

• A mental disorder which usually appears in early childhood and typically involves avoidance of social contact, abnormal language and ‘stereotypic’ behaviours.

Question 5

What Is The Sally-Anne Task? (False Belief)

Answer 5

• Baron-Cohen et al (1985) created a false belief task called the Sally-Anne Task.
• Children were told a story involving two dolls, Sally and Anne.
• Sally places a marble in her basket, but when Sally is not looking Anne moves the marble to her box.
• The task is to work out where Sally will look for her marble.
• Understanding that Sally does not know that Anne has moved the marble requires an understanding of Sally’s false believes about where it is.

Question 6

Overview Of Theory Of Mind.

Answer 6

• TOM is the ability that each of us has to ‘mind-read.
• Each of us has a theory of mind when we have a belief about what is in someone else’s mind.
  -Different methods are used to study ToM at different points in development:
  1) Intentional reasoning research – assesses the emergence of a simple ToM in toddlers.
  2) False belief tasks – assess a more sophisticated level of ToM.
  3) Eyes Task – assesses advanced ToM in older children and adults; participants judge complex emotions with minimal information about facial expressions.

Question 7

Intentional Reasoning In Toddlers.

Answer 7

• Meltzoff showed that toddlers around18 months understand adult intentions when carrying out simple actions.
• Procedure: Children (18m) observed adults place beads into a jar. Experimental Condition: adults appeared to struggle w/this and dropped the beads. Control Condition: adults placed the beads successfully in the jar.
• Findings: Both conditions the toddler placed the beads in the jar, didn’t drop beads in EC therefore suggesting they were imitating what the adult intended to do.
• Conclusion: Shows that very young children have a simple TOM.

Question 8

False Belief Tasks.

Answer 8

• Dvlped to test whether children can understand that people can believe something that is not true - Wimmer and Perner.
• Procedure: Told 3-4yr olds a story whereMaxi left his chocolate in a blue cupboard then went to the playground. Maxi’s mother used some of the chocolate in her cooking and placed the rest in the green cupboard. Children were asked where Maxi would look for his chocolate when he comes back from the playground.
• Findings: Most 3-year olds said that he would look in the green cupboard. They know that it is in the green cupboard, but do not realise that Maxi doesn’t know his mother moved it. However, most 4-year olds correctly identified the blue cupboard.
• Conclusions This suggests that ToM undergoes a shift and becomes more advanced at around four years.

Question 9

Sally-Anne Studies: Baron-Cohen And ASD.

Answer 9

• Procedure: 20 children diagnosed with ASD and control groups of 14 children with Down’s syndrome and 27 without a diagnosis were individually administered the Sally-Anne study.
  -Findings 85% of children in the control groups correctly identified where Sally would look for her marble. 20% of children in the ASD group correctly answered.
• Conclusions This difference demonstrated that ASD involves a ToM deficit. Barhon-Cohen and his colleagues suggested that deficits in ToM might be a complete explanation for ASD.

Question 10

Testing Older Children And Adults -Contradictory Findings.

Answer 10

• AS is a type of ASD characterised by problems with empathy, social communication and imagination but normal language development.
• Studies of older children and adults with AS showed that this group succeeded easily on false belief tasks.
• This contradicted the idea that ASD can be explained by ToM deficits.

Question 11

Testing Older Children And Adults - Baron-Cohen Eye Task.

Answer 11

• Baron-Cohen and colleagues dvlped a more challenging task to assess ToM in adolescents and adults.
• The Eyes Task involves reading complex emotions in pictures of faces just showing a small area around the eyes.
• Barhon-Cohen et al (1997) found that adults with AS and those with a diagnosis of ASD struggled with the Eyes Task.
• Adults on the autistic spectrum had a mean score of 16.3 compared to ‘typical’ participants with a mean score of 20.3 out of a maximum of 25.
• This supports the ideas that ToM decificts might be the cause of ASD.

Question 12

Biological Basis.

Answer 12

• ToM appears to develop at a particular age and it is likely to be absent in many people with autism suggests a biological basis.
• Baron-Cohen has proposed a ToM module (ToMM), which is a specific mechanism that matures in the brain around the age of four and explains an individual’s ability to understand the mental states of other people.
• Dvlpment of ToM comes the ability to manipulate and deceive others by hiding one’s emotions and intentions. This occurs from three years of age.

Question 13

Evaluation: Weakness - FB Lacks Validity.

Answer 13

• False belief tasks lack validity.
• Bloom and German suggest that success on a false belief task requires other cognitive abilities apart from TOM for example memory.
• The Sally-Anne story is quite long for a 3 year old to remember.
• This is problematic as Theory of Mind research is dominated by false belief research.

Question 14

Evaluation: Weakness - Perspective Taking Not TOM.

Answer 14

• Many of the methods used to study TOM could simply measure perspective-taking.
• For example, responses to the Sally-Anne task could be explained in terms of children’s ability to take Sally’s perspective.
• TOM is therefore hard to distinguish from perspective taking.
  This challenges the validity of TOM research if it is just measuring the ability to view social situations from another person’s point of view.

Question 15

Evaluation: Strength/Weakness - Help Understand ASD However Usefulness?

Answer 15

• TOM research has been useful in helping us understand the differing experiences of those on the ASD and those who are “neurotypical”.
• It is widely agreed that people on the ASD have more difficulty than others on age-appropriate TOM tests.
• However, the suggestion by Baron-Cohen that ASD is the direct result of TOM has been questioned.
• Tager-Flusberg (2007) suggests that more recent research has questioned the assumption that TOM problems are specific to ASD and that all those on the autism spectrum suffer TOM problems.

Question 16

Evaluation: Weakness - Doesn’t Tell Us How.

Answer 16

• There is no clear understanding of how TOM develops.
• Perner et al adopt a Piagetian approach and see TOM a simply developing in line with all cognitive abilities.
• But Wilde Astington takes a more Vygotskian approach and suggests that we internalise our TOM during early interactions with adults. If we do not know how TOM develops, it cannot be used as a causal explanation for ASD.

Question 17

Evaluation: Weakness - ET Lacks Validity.

Answer 17

• The Eyes Task lacks validity.
• The experience of looking at a static pair of eyes in isolation is very different from real life where we usually have access to more additional information.
• This questions the TOM research as it suggests that the theory is not standing on an acceptable level of empirically based ideas. It may be that the concepts are difficult to test but, until they are, the theory cannot be regarded as valid.