Lecture 2 - Theoretical debates about ToM development in children and infants

Question 1

pre 2005 what was the consensus view

Answer 1

consensus as to how ToM developed in children
4-5 years: false belief
3-4 years: know, not know, appearances, desire
18-24 months: pretend play
1-18 months: perceptual states; joint attention, gaze following, mutual gaze, pointing, meotion recognition, attribution of intentions

Question 2

explain theory- theory

Answer 2

conceptual change
a theory of mind is really a lay or intuitive theory of mental states that develops and changes progressively
children aquire increasingly comples concepts about the mind, as they aquire increasingly complex concepts about other aspects of the world (eg physics)
eg Perner, Wellman)

Question 3

Modularity theory

Answer 3

Early Competence
a theory of mind is a theory-of-mind mechanism (ToMM)
an innate specialized cognitive mechanism or module that we metaphorically call theory of mind
an innate system of concepts that allow us to see the world in mentalisitc term (no conceptual change)
eg Leslie

Question 4

an exampole of theory-theory vs modularity

- the conept of belief and where it comes from

Answer 4

Theory-theory: do we discover it from out own behaviour and personal experience and interacting with others? Are we taught it, for example in conversation with others? A combination of all this?
Modularity: Or is it an innate concept in the human mind? Do we spontaneously see behaviour mentalistically just as we see in colour, because our brain is hard wired to do so?
Leslie - innate concepts as engines of development: we still must learn lots of things about beliefs and other mental states, but the core concept itself is innate

Question 5

Theory-theory: evidence of conceptual change from tasks that are passed at around the same time (4/5 years old)
name one and explain what it shows

Answer 5

The Smarties (unexpected Contents Test, Perner, Leekman & Wimmer, 1987)
a conceptual change (acquisition of metarepresentational concept of belief) must occur at around 4 years of age and would explain this overall pattern

Question 6

orderly deveopmental progression

belief and knowledge understanding

Answer 6

understanding belief is more complex than understanding knowledge
understanding belief requires not only recording what others know and ignore but also that their outdated knowledge remain in the mind as a false belief - a representational theory of mind

Question 7

what makes children pass false belief tests earlier

Answer 7

the more experience (evidence) children have with social interaction, the earlier they pass Fb tests
experimental finding (Perner & Ruffman, 1994): 3-4 year old children from larger famillies were better able than children from smaller fmailies to predict a story character's mistaken (false belief) action
perner interprets the results as suggesting that sibling interaction provides a rch database for building a theory of mind

Question 8

how does Leslie argue for no concpectual change in development

Answer 8

pretend play at 18-24 months suggests that very young kids may already have metarepresentation
argues pretend play needs metarepresenttion; therefore metarepresentation must be already present at 18-24 months

Question 9

define metarepresentation

Answer 9

representing not just others’ representations (propositions), but also their epistemic “attitudes” to them
Leslie 1987

Question 10

what is fals ebelief understanding according to leslie

Answer 10

understanding that representations may or may not match realitt, and that different people may have different propositional attitudes to the same proposition: ie belief, remember, know, ignore, etc

Question 11

referential opacity

Answer 11

a philosophical problem
a meta-representation may be true, even if the proposition that it contains false (eg it is true sally believes the marble is in the basket, even if this proposition is not true), or viceversa

Question 12

leslie explaining from pretend play to false belief test passing

Answer 12

Leslie: in their ability to produce and understand pretend play, 18-24 months are already demonstrating they posses the ToM mechanism necessary for meta-representation and dealing with the referencial opacity of belief
but then why FB not passed till 4 yo?
Leslie: passing FB tests may have additional cognitive demands (linguistic and executive function)

Question 13

perner’s objection to leslie pretend play = metarepresentation statement

Answer 13

for young children pretend is just a type of behaviour (acting as if)
they understand that sometimes people act as if but conceptually they cannot tell the difference between when they do so on purpose (pretend) or by mistake (false belief): termed prelief

Question 14

explain perner prelief hypothesis

Answer 14

in ToM development, children initially (aged 3) have a concept of “prelief” (the mental state for acting as if) which is then conceptually differentiated into the distinct notions of belief and pretend at around age 4/5

Question 15

Lillard 1993 pretend task

Answer 15

this is moe
moe doesn’t know what a rabbit is, never seen one, never heard of one either
but look
moe is hopping up and down like a rabbit
is moe pretending to be a rabbit
- both 4 and 5 year olds performed worse than chance
- both 4 and 5 year olds performed worse than at standard false belief (smarties task)

Question 16

leslie counterargument against prelief hypothesis

Answer 16

factors facilitating performance in flase belief tests suggest competence might be masked by additional demands

Question 17

look first procedure (part of leslie’s counteragrument against prelief hypothesis)

Answer 17

children may pass false-belief earlier than 4 years with a small change in the experimental question - a demonstration that they do not have the competence, but their performance is hindered by other cognitive factors (eg the need to inhibit their true belief)
ie changing the wording of the question:
where will jane look FIRST
= this small manipulation in wording: 71% correct compared to 35% correct in traditional false belief (3 years 8months)

Question 18

false belief avoidance tasks : making false belief more difficult

Answer 18

at age 4-5, children who pass normal false belief tasks (requiring inhibition of true belief) fail standard avoidance tasks (requiring inhibition of the true belief), but may pass them in the “look first” worded version
they have the concept of false belief, but depending upon the additional task constraints (amount of inhibition required) they pass or fail

Question 19

summary of leslie’s argument and conclusions

Answer 19

The theory of mind mechanism (ToMM) is part of the core architecture of the human brain and is specialized for learning about mental states
attributing mental states is like seeing in colour: the child does not build theories of what colour is nor discovers theories of particular colours. Instead the mechanisms of colour vision serve to introduce colour representations and to lock the representations to appropriate referents in the world
ToMM kick-starts belief-desire attribution, but effective reasoning about belief contents depends on additional cognitive processes such as inhibition that developes slowly through the preschool period and well beyond

Question 20

Results of meta analysis of theory of mind development (wellman, cross and watson, 2001)
-background

Answer 20

concpetual change (theory theory) vs eary competence (modularity)
147 studies on false belief understanding put together and analysed
above chance performance starts only around 3.5 years and keeps growing with age
many varoables have no significant effects on performance on false belief tests

Question 21

Results of meta analysis of theory of mind development (wellman, cross and watson, 2001)
-conclusion

Answer 21

early competence (Modularity) models are not supported by data - theory theory is the best explanation
beyond any facilitatory or modulating effect of performance factors, the truth is that under 3 years children perform at chance or below chance in FB tasks because they lack the notion of false belief and meta-representation in general
however 30-40 month olds always remain at chance or below chance

Question 22

explain the two systems hypothesis

Answer 22

infants success in some FB tasks may be explained by the existence of two different cognitive systems:
an implicit ToM system: efficient, automatic, shared by infants, children and adults that uses a minimal model of the mind. Enabling tracking of some belief-like states (eg location FB situations, but not identity FB situations) – signature limits. Implicit not requiring executive functions or ocnscious reasoning
an explicit ToM system, later developing, more flexible and encompassing cognitively more demanding, using propositional attitudes and meta-representations which is assessed by traditional FB tasks. Explicit requiring executive functions and conscious reasoning