lecture 5-TOM Flashcards
what is ToM?
-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
what is ToM 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 (
what is ToM 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”
why is ToM important?
-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
Premack and Woodruff (1978)
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?
How does ToM develop?
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
how does ToM develop 2
-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
Desires guide actions
- 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
beliefs guide actions
2-years olds show little understanding that beliefs also influence behaviours of others
Wellman and Woolley (1990) study
Pretend play and ToM
-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
ToM and aging
-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
ToM and aging 2
- 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
ToM and aging 3
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
methods to test ToM
-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
False Belief task
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