lecture 5-TOM

Question 1

what is ToM?

Answer 1

-Theory of Mind (ToM) is the attribution of mental states to other people
E.g. the PM thinks that the Queen is a lovely person*
A mental state is an idea, a piece of knowledge, a thought, an emotion, a want, a need of a person

Question 2

what is ToM 2

Answer 2

ToM is a complex cognitive function that requires the integration of information from many sources
Memory, joint attention, complex perceptual recognition (face, gaze-processing), language, tracking of intentions/goals/moral reasoning, emotion processing-recognition, empathy, imitation
ToM is dependent on the maturation of several brain systems
ToM is shaped by parenting, social relations, training and education (

Question 3

what is ToM 3

Answer 3

ToM is “the ability to put oneself into someone else’s shoes, to imagine their thoughts and feelings”
“When we mind-read or mentalise, we not only make sense of another person’s behaviour, but we also imagine a whole set of mental states and we can predict what they might do next”

Question 4

why is ToM important?

Answer 4

-Understanding the intentions of others is the basis of nearly all social interactions among people beyond preschool age
-Knowing another person’s goals and/or inner states can be useful in order to:
-Predict the person’s future actions
-Co-operative, non-co-operative, threatening
Adjust your actions appropriately

Question 5

Premack and Woodruff (1978)

Answer 5

Premack and Woodruff (1978) introduced the concept of ToM
They posed the question as to whether the chimpanzee has a ToM – could chimps understand human goals?
Big debate sparked
What does “imputing mental states to oneself and others” actually mean?
What evidence is necessary and sufficient to make such an inference?

Question 6

How does ToM develop?

Answer 6

Early infant interest in behaviour of others
Preference for looking at faces rather than objects
Imitation of facial movements
Intention (~ 8 months)
the desire to act in a certain way
Gestures (~9 months +)
Often occur before verbal language, and can be effective in communication between people
Pointing is an especially important gesture
Joint attention (starts ~3 months, refined at 9-18 months)
Where two+ people focus intentionally on the same point

Question 7

how does ToM develop 2

Answer 7

-Understanding the desires of others (~12 months+)
Phillips, Wellman and Spelke (2002) paper
-8 month and 12 month olds; two kittens example
-Theory of Mind (13-15 months; 18-24 months; 3-5 years)
-ToM starts to operate in the human from about 13 months of age, when language learning takes place
-At 18-24 months there is a convergence of several important developmental milestones
-Full understanding joint attention
-Deliberate imitation
-Ability to track a speaker’s intention during learning
-Decoding words
-At 18 months, children show a sensitivity to others’ intentions and from there a ToM develops

Question 8

Desires guide actions

Answer 8

• a 2-year old who would rather play with trucks than dolls is told a story about another child who would rather play with dolls
• the 2 year old will predict that when given a choice, the character in the story would rather play with the doll than the truck
• the 2-year old understands the desire of another person and how this desire can influence behaviour

Question 9

beliefs guide actions

Answer 9

2-years olds show little understanding that beliefs also influence behaviours of others
Wellman and Woolley (1990) study

Question 10

Pretend play and ToM

Answer 10

-Pretend (make-believe) play facilitates ToM development
Joint proposals between children about a situation
Role assignment
Meta-communication about a scenario
-Starts around 18 months of age and declines after 6 years

Question 11

ToM and aging

Answer 11

-Happé and colleagues (1998) asked if older adults show a dissolution of ToM
-Strange Stories task used with 19 healthy older adults (mean age 73 yrs) and 2 samples of younger adults
-Elderly group performed better than young adults on -ToM stories, but not on control or jumbled passages
Suggested that this is evidence for a dedicated processing mechanism in brain for ToM; whilst other cognitive functions decline with age, ToM is preserved

Question 12

ToM and aging 2

Answer 12

• Maylor and colleagues (2002) replicated and extended Happé’s study
• Three groups of 25 participants were tested – young (16-29 years), young-old (60 – 74) and old-old (75-89 years)
• Ten ToM and 5 control stories were used
• Found opposite results: the old-old and young-old groups performed in a similar manner on the ToM stories, which was significantly worse than the young group
• Also suggested a ToM module, which is affected with age

Question 13

ToM and aging 3

Answer 13

Researchers tested a number of different hypotheses to explain these findings
Different ToM tasks used
Different tasks of executive functioning used
Measured influence of educational level
Cognitive and affective versions of ToM questions
Social interaction may play a role in ToM performance
Henry et al., (2013) published a meta-analysis of 23 datasets investigating the effects of age on ToM performance
found that the negative effect of age on ToM performance was of a moderate magnitude (r = -.41)
With few exceptions, whilst the older adults performed in a similar manner as the younger adults on the control tasks, the older adults performed more poorly on the ToM tasks

Question 14

methods to test ToM

Answer 14

-Over 30 tasks have been used to measure ToM in children
-Many consist of a brief story followed by questions that require ToM to be correctly answered
Task examples
False Belief task
Recognition of mental states
Answering a question both truthfully and falsely
Stories (like the Strange Stories)
Images, comic strips, videos
Deception
Higher levels of social cognition (humour, sarcasm, metaphor)
Intentions and empathy

Question 15

False Belief task

Answer 15

False Belief task is the most commonly used ToM task type
Sally and Anne task* is the most common False Belief task
3 yr olds: box
4 yr olds: mix of both
5 yr olds: basket

Question 16

Where will Sally look for the ball?

Answer 16

3 yr olds: box
The child’s belief represents everyone’s reality for 3 year olds (egocentric response)
The child knows that the ball is in the box and so thinks that Sally will think it is in the box also
4 yr olds: mix of either
5 yr olds: basket
The child realises that beliefs are merely mental representations of reality that may be wrong and someone else may not share
Belief determines behaviour (even if the belief is wrong)
The child realises that Sally’s belief that the ball is in the basket determines her behaviour, even though the belief is wrong (as the ball is in the box)

Question 17

False Belief Task continued

Answer 17

Extremely robust finding (a review of 178 studies of children’s false belief understandings showed similar results across different forms of the problem, different questions, and different societies)
Social factors seem to influence ToM development
Pretend play
Conversations with family members and friends, where motivations, incentives, desires, goals, reasoning etc are discussed
If the False Belief task is presented in a way that facilitates understanding, then many 3 yr olds will pass the test
“Playing a trick”

Question 18

First and second order tasks

Answer 18

First-order tasks require that another person’s mental state is read/understood
“Sally thinks that the ball is in the basket”
Children aged between 3 and 5 will pass the Sally and Anne test
Second-order tasks require understanding of what two people think sequentially
“John thinks that Mary feels that….”
Typically developing children will pass second-order tests at around 6 years of age

Question 19

ToM Strange Story

Answer 19

Why the burglar do this, when the policeman just wanted to give him back his glove?
Example responses scored: 2. “Because he thought the policeman knew he had robbed the shop.” -second order
1. “Because he thought he was caught- first order

Question 20

control story

Answer 20

Example responses scored:

2. “Because the burglar disturbed a cat, which ran through the detector beam”
3. “Because something broke the alarm

Question 21

Theoretical frameworks

Answer 21

There are two main theoretical approaches used in explaining ToM:
Theory theory
Simulation theory

Question 22

Theory Theory

Answer 22

People derive theories about the mental states of others
They make theories about how, why and what other people are thinking
Mental states attributed to other people are used to explain and predict behaviour
People construct a set of causal/explanatory laws that relate:
External stimuli to internal states (perception to belief)
Inner states to other inner states (desire to decision)
Inner states to behaviour (decision to action)

Question 23

theory theory continued

Answer 23

Adults’ ToM is based on belief-desire reasoning (Wellman & Woolley, 1990)
We understand that our behaviour and that of others, is based on what we know, or believe, and what we want, or desire
Very young children may view desire as the most important driver of behaviour
Their own actions are often triggered by desires
They assume that other peoples’ behaviours are also driven by desires

Question 24

theory theory nativists

Answer 24

Nativists (“we possess innate knowledge”):
Argue that there is a ToM module in the brain that is devoted to understanding other human beings
This ToMM matures over the first 5 years

Question 25

Empiricists

Answer 25

(“we possess knowledge from experience”):
Argue that psychological understanding arises from interactions with other people
Pre-schoolers who have older siblings outperform children without siblings on ToM tasks

Question 26

Information-processing theorists

Answer 26

Argue that the growth of information-processing skills (such as reasoning and inhibition of thoughts) aids ToM ability

Question 27

Simulation Theory

Answer 27

-Simulation Theory arose from doubts about whether people really have explanatory laws to explain other peoples’ behaviours
-People (attributors) use their own mental mechanisms to calculate and predict others’ mental processes
-One simulates the thought processes, desires, beliefs and preferences of the other, to predict the person’s next decision/movement/choice
Kahneman and Tversky example

Question 28

Difference between the two theories

Answer 28

Theory Theory depicts mind-reading as a “detached” theoretical activity, whereas Simulation Theory depicts it as incorporating an attempt to replicate, mimic, or impersonate the mental life of the target agent
TT and ST need not be mutually exclusive

Question 29

Summary

Answer 29

• ToM is an important social skill to develop
• It appears to develop between 3 and 5 years of age
• It may decline in older age
• Theory Theory and Simulation Theory are used to explain ToM
• The medial prefrontal cortex/orbitofrontal cortex appears to be involved in ToM processing