Language and the social mind

Question 1

What is understood under the theory of mind?

Answer 1

• capacity to impute one owns and others mental states (able to do so from 8-month of age)
• able to program robots with mental awareness (to a certain extend)

Question 2

Name the typical test for the theory of mind.

Answer 2

Rouge test; red dot on infants forehead and see if infant recognizes itself in the mirror (also works for chimps, other experiment; could see what struggling men in video wants to do)

Question 3

Describe the function of intention concerning language?

Answer 3

• triangulation; adult-infant-object, adult interacts/connects with infants desires over an object (eye gaze), at around 12-month -> wird learning via connection (shared-attention)
• infants imitate caregivers actions, in case they see a purpose for them to do so

Question 4

Describe the effect autism has on language acquisition.

Answer 4

Autism is a syndrome which makes it hard for individuals to attribute mental state to the person itself and others, no engagement in eye-gaze, therewith no joint-attention engagement -> difficulty in language acquisition

Question 5

How do desires play a role in the theory of mind?

Answer 5

perception of desires, intentions, ability to recognize mental states -> cognitive abilities needed, complex
-> infants are able to understand these already

Question 6

What is the definition of true beliefs?

Answer 6

Understand what other people know about the world (from 3-4 years onwards)

Question 7

What is understood under false-belief?

Answer 7

understand what other person knows about the scenery (when person missed some occurrence in-between) -> assessing a second mindset (extra level of abstraction)
-> from the age of 4-6 years onwards

Question 8

What is understood under the second-order false belief?

Answer 8

from 6-7 years onwards; ex. “Where do you think John thinks Mary is going to look for the ice-cream?”
-> a lot of concentration and attention needed

Question 9

How does language help to understand false-beliefs?

Answer 9

1. recursion; represents others people knowledge of the world
2. language = control mechanism
3. explicit -> implicit; able to recognize language shows awareness in cognition
4. different mind modules (coming together in knowledge)
5. language as pre-requisite for false-beliefs (inside language)

Question 10

Do apes have a false belief?

Answer 10

yes, but limited: can not communicate it (cannot make a sure claim therefore), understanding not explicit

Question 11

Describe the relation between ToM and language (over the several stages of life).

Answer 11

• first years of life; ToM helps language acquisition (triangularity, joint attention)
• between 2-4 years; bidirectional influence
• from 4-years onwards; language helps ToM, crystalized language allows richer perception

Question 12

What comes first: ToM or language?

Answer 12

ToM is there from birth onwards, language evolves afterwards