Theory of mind Flashcards
What is theory of mind and what is the term used to describe a person that does not have theory of mind?
Ability to understand the contents of another mind. Involving others thoughts, beliefs, intentions, desires and knowledge.
Egocentric
What does Dennet (1978) suggest ?
The key to understanding other minds is to understand that others have beliefs and these beliefs govern behaviour - allows to predict behaviour in social situations.
Describe a test used to study children’s understanding of other people’s minds’.
False-belief tasks - unexpected transfer task. Question asked by researcher to children. John puts chocolate in the cupboard and leaves the room. His mother moves the chocolate into the fridge. When John goes back into the kitchen to find the chocolate, where will he look?
- In order to answer the question correctly the child would need to know that John holds a false-belief (different from his own) about the true placement of the object as he did not see the transfer.
Describe Wimmer and Perner’s aim and findings.
Outline one criticism of the study
Aim was to identify the age at which a child develops theory of mind.
under age 4 = egocentric, over the age of 4, the children answered the question correctly and therefore has a knowledge of another persons mind - radical change in understanding at this age.
They used dolls as the subjects of the story - children may understand that the dolls aren’t real, and don’t have a mind therefore Perner, Wimmer and Leekham developed deceptive box task.
Describe Wimmer, Perner and Leekham’s task
Deceptive box task. Children were shown that when a smarties box was opened it revealed a pencil. The children were then asked what another child would say was in the box when they had never seen the actual contents.
Children aged 3-4 and under said pencil therefore answering incorrectly.
Evidence of children not fully understanding their own minds as well as others’.
Gopnik and Astington (1988). Asked the children, when you first saw the box, what did you think was inside. Children answered incorrectly by saying pencil. This suggests that they had difficulty acknowledging their own beliefs.
State one limitation of the deceptive box task
Beattie (1991) suggested that children may just misunderstand the time reference of the question during the task.
what are the two catagories of questions that can be asked to understand TOM
explicit = children are directly asked to report on the contents of another mind Implicit = children engage in behaviour which implies that they are aware of others' minds
Evidence of children showing TOM earlier than age of 4: Onishi and Baillargeon
An unexpected transfer task (implicit) with the infant witnessing where an agent will look for an object after placing it in a box (green) and it then being transferred to another (yellow) whilst they were not watching. When the agent reached into the box that the object was transferred into, the infant stared longer at the situation compared to when the agent reached into the box they placed it into.
How does deception and TOM link? Give evidence
Actively trying to deceive someone suggests knowledge of other peoples minds as know what the other person believes and knows.
Chandler (1989) - 5-year-old children destroyed evidence to prevent other’s from finding the treasure.
What research did Wellman, Cross and Watson conducts and what were their findings?
Meta-analysis involving 178 studies and found that at age 4 years old there seems to be a radical conceptual change and childrens understanding of minds increases.
What is the Dual-route model to understanding TOM suggested by by Apperly and Butterfill (2009)? What discrepancies in evidence does this model account for?
Two systems that compute the beliefs of others:
- fast and efficient system - occurs automatically.
- slow and cognitively demanding system (only developed at age 4)
Reports of TOM occurring earlier than aged 4 - fast and automatic system. Only when children are asked to consciously report on a false-belief task = wrong.
What influences TOM development?
- Parenting - e.g., economic stress, single parenting have been associated with poor TOM. Mothers who explain psychological causality to children have shown to have improved TOM.
- family sized - more siblings that are more developmentally advanced+ larger extended families
- culture = rate of development of TOM is stable across culture but different on-set times.
