Ontogeny of mentalising: Development of Theory of Mind

Question 1

describe how Onishi & Baillargeon (2005) investigated implicit FB understanding in 15 month old infants?

Answer 1

• violation of expectancy method
• familiarise infant to event
• present test behaviour that is consistent/inconsistent with prior event
• infants look longer at inconsistent event
• indicates some level of knowledge about what should happen

Question 2

what is theory of mind?

Answer 2

• the insight that people hold mental states and these govern behaviour (beliefs, desires, goals)
• allows us to make sense of the social world and predict and explain other’s actions

Question 3

what is a desire based theory of mind?

Answer 3

people’s desires are idiosyncratic (personal to themselves) and constantly changing

Question 4

describe results of the broccoli/crackers study by Repacholi & Gopnik (1997)

Answer 4

• 18 month old but not 14 month old children understood experimenter’s desired food (broccoli) differed from theirs (crackers)
• suggests they understand desire is subjective mental state than can differ from person to person

Question 5

what is a belief based theory of mind?

Answer 5

• distinction between mind/world (reality)
• requires notion that person has representation of world, the contents of which may be different from contents of world itself or from our own beliefs
• shift from a situation based to representation based understanding of behaviour

Question 6

describe the false belief task?

Answer 6

• tests whether child can represent what another person believes in contrast to their own beliefs or reality

Question 7

what are two false belief tasks?

Answer 7

1) unexpected transfer task, also known as Maxi-Chocolate task and Sally-Ann task

2) deceptive box task, also known as Smarties task

Question 8

describe the unexpected transfer or Maxi task method (Wimmer & Lerner, 1983)

Answer 8

• maxi puts his chocolate in cupboard
• while maxi is out playing, his mum takes chocolate from cupboard and grates some it it into a cake
• mum puts his chocolate in the fridge
• maxi is returning from play, he wants his chocolate
• where will he look for his chocolate?
• had various questions assessing child’s memory too

Question 9

how will children answer the question ‘where will maxi look for his chocolate?’ if they don’t have an understanding of theory of mind?

Answer 9

they will say maxi will look in fridge or respond randomly

Question 10

what are the results of the unexpected transfer task/maxi chocolate task (Wimmer & Lerner, 1983)

Answer 10

• 5+ year olds judge maxi will look for chocolate where he put it (ToM)
  less than 5 years judge - maxi will look where they will look (fridge) - egocentric response

Question 11

describe the sally-ann task (Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 1985)

Answer 11

• sally puts a block in box
• ann puts block in basket while sally is away
• asks ‘where will sally think the block is when she comes back?’

Question 12

what were the results of Gopnik & Astington (1988) replication of the deceptive box task?

Answer 12

3-4 year olds have difficulty acknowledging false belief in others and own prior false belief once know what is inside smarties tube

Question 13

are the findings of the deceptive box task consistent with the maxi-task and sally-ann task?

Answer 13

yes:
- 3 year old children usually fail FB tasks
- 4 year old children usually pass FB tasks
- however individual differences

Question 14

why may the false belief task be a problem with language?

Answer 14

• temporal marking (children focus on the word WHERE when asked - where will maxi look for the chocolate, and immediately say where it is)

Question 15

when the test question of the unexpected transfer task was altered to “where will maxi look first of all” (Siegal & Beattie, 1991), did this improve task performance?

Answer 15

yes but not dramatically, not enough to reveal underlying competence

Question 16

what 2 ways has the unexpected transfer task been altered to simplify the task?

Answer 16

• alter question “where will maxi look first of all?” (Siegal & Beattie, 1991)
• check children’s story comprehension as it progressed (Lewis et al., 1994)

Question 17

in Wellman, Cross & Watson’s (2001) meta-analysis of 178 studies, what did they find support for?

Answer 17

substantial developmental effect over preschool years:
- less than 3.5 years = children tend to fail FB
- over 4 years, children tend to pass FB

Question 18

Wellman, Cross & Watson’s (2001) meta-analysis of 178 studies revealed which task variables improved performance on FB tasks?

Answer 18

• deceptive motive (person moving object was trying to deceive other)
• active participation (when child helped move object)
• salience of mental state (thought bubble showing mental state of characters)

however, they did not dramatically improve performance

Question 19

are the results of FB tasks universal (Callaghan et al., 2005)?

Answer 19

yes, in Peru, India, Samoa, Canada:
- children systematically fail at 3 years
- majority of children transition at 4 years
- children systematically pass at 5 years
- support for universality of developmental shift between 3-5 years

Question 20

what 2 factors contribute to ToM development?

Answer 20

1) social experience aids understanding of mental states (arises from interactions from others)

2) biological maturation (enables children to express understanding of mental states, arises from improvement in executive functioning)

Question 21

how does biological maturation contribute to ToM development?

Answer 21

enables children to express understanding of mental states, arises from improvement in executive functioning

Question 22

how are conversations crucial for exposing children to other people’s perspectives and ToM? (Harris, 1999)

Answer 22

• learn that other people have different internal worlds that differ from our own & reality
• provide children with vocab needed to discuss & reflect on mental states (the word thought)

Question 23

do children with older siblings show an earlier or later ToM development? (Perner, Ruffman & Leekham, 1994)

Answer 23

earlier ToM - additional exposure to another child’s desires/mental states

Question 24

what children show a developmental lag on FB tasks (Peterson & Siegel, 1995)

Answer 24

deaf children of hearing parents - own sign language tends to be basic, less exposure to sign language that talks about mental states

Question 25

what elements does the theory of mind scale (Wellman & Loui, 2004) comprise?

Answer 25

• diverse desires
• diverse beliefs
• knowledge access
• false belief
• hidden emotion

Question 26

in the theory of mind scale (Wellman & Loui, 2004), what is meant by the element ‘diverse desires’?

Answer 26

people can have different desires for the same thing (broccoli-crackers study)

Question 27

in the theory of mind scale (Wellman & Loui, 2004), what is meant by the element ‘diverse beliefs’?

Answer 27

people can have different beliefs about the same situation

Question 28

in the theory of mind scale (Wellman & Loui, 2004), what is meant by the element ‘knowledge access’?

Answer 28

something can be true, but someone might not know that (ignorance)

Question 29

in the theory of mind scale (Wellman & Loui, 2004), what is meant by the element ‘false belief’?

Answer 29

something can be true, but someone might falsely believe something different

Question 30

in the theory of mind scale (Wellman & Loui, 2004), what is meant by the element ‘hidden emotion’?

Answer 30

someone can feel one way but display a different emotion

Question 31

describe the order of development of different elements of theory of mind in children in western countries? (Wellman et al., 2006)

Answer 31

• diverse desires
• diverse beliefs
• knowledge access
• false beliefs
• hidden emotion

Question 32

describe the order of development of different elements of ToM in children in chinese and iranian children? (Wellman et al., 2006)

Answer 32

• diverse desires
• knowledge access
• diverse beliefs
• false beliefs
• hidden emotions

Question 33

what are the differences in the order of development of different elements of ToM in western and eastern children thought to be related to?

Answer 33

differences in cultural values:

collectivism: more emphasis on agreement between individuals, discouraged from voicing disagreements, potentially less exposure to false beliefs

individualism: more emphasis on personal beliefs so more exposure to false beliefs

Question 34

what is inhibition?

Answer 34

ignoring distracting info or suppressing unwanted responses

Question 35

n the lab, how is inhibition investigated?

Answer 35

bear/dragon task

Question 36

describe the bear/dragon task for investigating inhibition?

Answer 36

• simon says task
• 2 characters: nice bear and mean dragon
• ignore what dragon asks you to do (inhibit)
• do what bear asks you to do
• stroop paradigm

Question 37

what is cognitive flexibility?

Answer 37

responding to same thing in different ways depending on context

Question 38

in real life, how is cog flexibility demonstrated?

Answer 38

multiple passwords, up vs down in lift

Question 39

what is working memory

Answer 39

holding important info or your goal in mind and manipulating info in your head

i.e mental maths and mental shopping lists

Question 40

what is the role of executive function in false belief tasks?

Answer 40

ignore distracting/salient info - ignore own current belief, disengage

Question 41

what are the biological constraints of executive functions?

Answer 41

• frontal lobes of brain important for executive functions
• take a long time to develop

Question 42

what may be a crucial enabling factor for ToM development?

Answer 42

inhibitory control

Question 43

how did Moll et al (2016) investigate implicit understanding of FB via emotional response?

Answer 43

• investigated children’s facial expressions as indices of their belief understanding
• predicted that if 3 year olds perceive conflict between person’s belief & reality, they will show signs of suspense (lip biting and brow furrowing) when observing actor about to act on basis of their false belief

Question 44

describe results of Moll et al (2016) study investigating implicit understanding of FB via emotional response?

Answer 44

• greater expressed tension in false belief vs true belief condition
• suggests 3 yrs old express knowledge of another’s false belief
• recognised affective consequences of false belief
• in contrast, performance on classic FB task was poor
• suggests expressions are independent from and emerge prior to explicit knowledge of false beliefs

Question 45

what does the anticipatory looking paradigm require?

Answer 45

prediction - participants looking behaviour analysed to determine if they correctly expect what will happen next

Question 46

describe results of Clements & Perner (1994) study into implicit understanding of FB?

Answer 46

• 86% of children over 2y11m showed looking pattern indicative of FB understanding
• only one child under 2y11m looked towards correct location in FB condition

Question 47

describe the dissociation of implicit-explicit understanding of false belief?

Answer 47

• 3yr olds looked to correct location even though gave incorrect answer
• suggests children develop implicit/unconscious understanding of FB at earlier stage than they develop explicit/conscious understanding

Question 48

describe results of Onishi & Baillargeon (2005) study into implicit FB understanding in 15 month old infants?

Answer 48

• longer looking when expectation violated (actor’s action inconsistent with actor’s belief):
• when actor reaches in wrong box when has true belief
• or when reaches in right box when has false belief
• suggests infants expect people to search for objects consistent with their beliefs about object location, not where objects are in reality

Question 49

according to the dual-route model (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009) what two systems can compute beliefs of others?

Answer 49

• fast and efficient system
• slow and cognitively demanding system (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009)