social cognitive development

Question 1

What is Theory of Mind (ToM)?

Answer 1

The capacity to attribute mental states (e.g., desires, beliefs, knowledge) to oneself and others in order to predict or explain behavior.

Question 2

What are the key early social-cognitive developments in children?

Answer 2

• Visuo-spatial perspective taking
• False-belief understanding
• Appearance-reality distinction
• Situational and belief-based emotion understanding

Question 3

What is the ‘Unexpected Transfer’ false-belief task?

Answer 3

Tests whether a child can understand that another person holds a false belief about the location of an object.

Question 4

What is the ‘Unexpected Contents’ false-belief task?

Answer 4

Tests whether a child can recognize that someone else will be deceived by the appearance of a familiar container (e.g., Smarties box with pencils inside).

Question 5

What is the ‘Appearance-Reality’ task?

Answer 5

1. What does this look like to your eyes right now?
2. What is this really?

Question 6

What are features of advanced Theory of Mind?

Answer 6

• Second-order false-belief (e.g., “He thinks that she thinks…”)
• Faux pas understanding
• Understanding of sarcasm, irony, and double entendre
• Tasks like Strange Stories (Happé, 1994) and Silent Films Task (Devine & Hughes, 2013)

Question 7

What is Second-Order False-Belief?

Answer 7

Understanding that someone can have a belief about another person’s belief.
E.g., “Simon thinks that Mary thinks the chocolate is in the cupboard.” (Sullivan et al., 1994)

Question 8

What is the Faux Pas task and what does it assess?

Answer 8

Assesses understanding of social blunders.
Example: A character unknowingly insults someone (Banerjee & Watling, 2005).

Question 9

What is the Silent Films Task?

Answer 9

Children interpret nonverbal actions in silent film clips to infer intentions, thoughts, and emotions.
E.g., “Why did the men hide?” “What does the woman think?” (Devine & Hughes, 2013)

Question 10

What are common problems with Theory of Mind assessments?

Answer 10

• High language demands
• Often implicit vs. explicit distinction is unclear
• Use of single items at a single point in time
• May not reflect real-world use of ToM
• High memory load (Beaudoin et al., 2020)

Question 11

What is Theory-Theory (Gopnik & Wellman, 1992)?

Answer 11

Children are like scientists building theories about how minds work.
* Criticism: Difficult to test, possibly over-academic.

Question 12

What is Simulation Theory (Harris, 1991)?

Answer 12

Children use imagination and a “like me” perspective to simulate others’ mental states.
* Criticism: Imagination may be the result, not the cause, of ToM development.

Question 13

What is Modularity Theory (Leslie, 1999)?

Answer 13

ToM arises from a dedicated innate cognitive module or Theory of Mind Mechanism (ToMM).
* Criticism: Does not fully explain complex cognition or environmental influences.

Question 14

What are mirror neurons and their relevance to ToM?

Answer 14

Brain cells that fire both when an individual performs an action and when they observe it.
They simulate the actions and emotions of others (Gallese et al., 2004).
* Criticism: Do not explain complex mentalizing (Carpendale et al., 2018).

Question 15

What is the ‘localisation of function’ approach in ToM neuroscience?

Answer 15

Using neuroimaging to identify brain regions specialized in mental state attribution.
Saxe et al. (2009) found increasing specialization of neural systems during development.