L19 - Theory of Mind Flashcards
What is ToM?
- Understanding the mental states of others e.g beliefs/feelings/intentions
- Only have access to our own mental states so hard to understand mental states of others
- Social and cognitive psychologists interested in how we make mental state attributions
Does the chimpanzee have a ToM?
- Initially thought it was uniquely human and sets us apart from other animals
- Had a language trained Chimp and showed videos of a familiar human that faced an obstacle in certain situations. Then were shown 2 pictures, one which was a solution
- Chimp consistently chose the correct picture = interpreted as evidence that chimp understood actor’s goal BUT this has been criticised as there are many reasons why they chose the correct item via simple associations (cage/key) and does not require attributing beliefs to a person
- Newer studies show primates can do ToM
What was a true test of ToM?
- False belief tasks: someone else holds a mental state, different from own and from current state of reality
- Important because false beliefs exist only in the other persons mind
- Tested via sally-anne task
What was the ToM in development?
- Sally puts ball in basket, anne moved ball into else, where will sally look for the ball when she comes back?
- Most 3yo make errors on false belief task with systematic tendency to be egocentric but by 4/5 = children answer correctly
- If you get this task wrong, could be for many reasons: do not have false-beliefs, language issues, cannot suppress own knowledge
Are false belief tasks domain-specific or domain-general?
- Domain-specific: specialised to process only one kind of info = rpocess specialised for attributing mental states
- Domain-general: same resources also serve other cog functions (mostly this for ToM)
What are theories of ToM?
- Theory-Theory: store concepts and principles about mental states,
and how they affect behaviour (domain-specific) - Simulation theory: reason about others’ mental states based on our
own mental states, and even simulate them to attribute them to others (domain-general) - Modularity account: specific module for theory-of-mind, e.g. specific
set of brain regions (domain-specific e.g people with autism can do some Tom, but not others) - Two-system model: low-level system which gives rise to implicit
theory-of-mind e.g perspective taking; high-level system based on reasoning and explicit
representation of mental states
What is ToM in adults?
STUDY: where ppts do not perform at ceiling
- Used videos where actor looked into a jug and narrator said actor saw orange juice.
- Video paused, and, for half participants, experimenter told them another person had put milk in the jug
- In subsequent scene, actor told something about the jug and narrator announced that
the actor had been told there was milk in the jug.
- Participants then asked whether actor would believe narrator and change his mind about what he thought was in container
- Ppts judged it less likely actor would believe narrator when they knew actor’s belief was true, than when they knew his belief was false
- Adults allow their own knowledge to bias their mental state attribution to others
When do adults make errors in ToM?
- Egocentric errors in adults have been replicated by further studies
- When attributing mental states under uncertainty, adults use heuristic that other people are similar to themselves
- Overcoming egocentric bias is cognitively effortful
- Adult egocentric bias resembles egocentric bias seen in children
What are limitations to mental state attribution?
- Ppts have to interpret instructions from director e.g study with shelves with backing on some of them and asking to move objects one up
- Ppts make egocentric errors, failing to take director’s perspective into account
- Limitation may be holding director’s perspective in mind = can create overwhelming demands of the task = makes more errors = limitations in executive processes
What is the role of Executive Function in ToM? (With study)
- In children, performance on false-belief tasks and tasks of EF are correlated, but unclear which aspects of EF are critical
STUDY: - Patient WBA with large right frontal lesion, impaired in working memory and inhib control (EF)
- WBA performed below chance on standard reality known false belief task (ppt knows where the ball is)
- BUT WBA performed above chance in reality unknown false-belief task
- EF is important for specific aspects of mental state attribution - inhibiting self-perspective
What do we know about language?
- Language ability in typically developing children predicts success on false belief task, irrespective of age
- Deaf children with typical language acquisition succeed on false-belief tasks at the same age as hearing peers
- Deaf children with delayed language acquisition also show delays in succeeding on false-belief tasks
- Language is important for development of mental state attribution
What role does language play in a non-verbal ToM task?
- Social communicative role but fully non-verbal false-belief tasks do not reduce at age which children are able to perform correctly
- Acquisition of semantic knowledge of mental state words like ‘think’ and ‘want’
- Brain damaged patients with acquired aphasia (impairment in language comprehension/production) do not show impairments on non-verbal ToM
- Once normal ToM has developed, language does not seem to plat as much of a critical role
What are the brain regions associated with mental state attributions?
- Lots of brain regions to do with gaze processing overlap with mental-state attribution
- Lots of the info we extract from eyes lead to things like inferring mental state attributions
What was the first neuroimaging study of mental state attribution?
- Verbal stories designed to elicit mental state inferences about story characters e.g robber running away from robbery and drops glove, policemen tells him to stop because of glove and robber gives himself up, or stories with no mental state attributions
- Ppts told to read stories and why they unfolded the story in that way
- Found network of brain regions engaged for mental state attributions: medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and temporal pole
What is the relationship between mPFC damage and EF? (Study)
- 7 Patients with mPFC lesions, 8 with frontal, non-mPFC lesions
- Tested on EF tasks, and Faux Pas task: read a story and tell if someone has said something inappropriate or hurtful
- Amount of damage to mPFC was correlated with performance on Faux Pas task
- Not all tasks measuring mental state attribution requires EF
