Theory of mind

Question 1

What is Theory of mind?

Answer 1

The ability to ascribe mental states to one’s self and to others

Question 2

What does theory of mind lead to?

Answer 2

It leads to the understanding that mental states do not always accurately reflect reality, and leads to the understanding that mental states can be the causes of behaviour of other people

Question 3

What can interpreting mental states depend on?

Answer 3

Background knowledge

Question 4

What is an example of recursive imagining that uses theory of mind?

Answer 4

The thinking behind the game of rock, paper, and scissors

Question 5

What did Nelson and Luciana say about children before becoming fully linguistic?

Answer 5

They orient to other humans

Question 6

What do newborns orient towards?

Answer 6

Towards human faces

Question 7

What do 6 month olds orient towards?

Answer 7

Other people’s gaze

Question 8

What do 12 month olds orient towards?

Answer 8

Shared mutual gaze and proto-declarative pointing

Question 9

Describe Woodward’s study on humans as goal-oriented agents

Answer 9

9 month old infants were habituated to an adult reaching for one of two toys
Then the two toys were swapped, infants saw either the same reach to a new toy, or a new reach to the same toy
9 months old looked longer when the adult reached for the other toy, even though this was the same gesture they had habituated to. The children didn’t show this pattern for non-human reaches (mechanical claw)

Question 9

What does Woodward’s study on humans as goal-oriented agents show?

Answer 9

Infants seem to understand - on some level - that people can act in intentional goal directed ways. In other words, they can take account of mental states when observing the actions of others

Question 10

What do children do from 18 months old relating to language learning?

Answer 10

Children use their mental state awareness to help them learn language

Question 11

Describe Repacholi and Gopnik’s 1997 study using broccoli and goldfish crackers

Answer 11

Children were shown an adult presenting a reaction to hating goldfish crackers and loving broccoli. Children tend to feel the opposite
The adult then said ‘give me some’ to see what the child would hand them
She found that even 18 months old understand that other people may have different desires to themselves - expected that they would hand over what the infant preferred

Question 12

When can children explicitly contrast desires?

Answer 12

At 2 years olds

Question 13

When do children spontaneously use words like think and know?

Answer 13

3 years old

Question 14

What do children understand from infancy?

Answer 14

That other people may be driven by intentions

Question 15

Are children from infancy likely to have explicit awareness?

Answer 15

No, they don’t have insight into mental states

Question 16

When does explicit mental state understanding emerge?

Answer 16

12 months and 6 years

Question 17

What are four reasons mental state can be difficult for young children to apprehend?

Answer 17

Mental states are insubstantial
Mental states are frequently non-obvious
Mental states are rapidly changing
Mental states often depend on real-world knowledge

Question 18

What is a useful heuristic for children and why?

Answer 18

Extending their own knowledge to other people because often our thoughts tend to correspond closely with those of other people.

Question 19

Why will three year olds answer ‘yes’ when asked the question ‘does your friend like chocolate’?

Answer 19

As their response may be based on their own mental state, not that of their friend.

Question 20

When does genuine insight into children’s understanding of mental state occur?

Answer 20

When the mental states of others differ from their own

Question 21

Why are false beliefs experimentally convenient?

Answer 21

They avoid the problem that many beliefs catch up with reality . False belief tasks cannot be passed by substituting one’s own beliefs for those of the characters in the tasks.

Question 22

What is the unexpected transfer task?

Answer 22

A character is introduced
An event that induces a true belief; the character leaves
A second event, unseen by the character, occurs; this makes the belief false
The character returns, and a question is asked about his/her belief
Passing this task marks a step forward in terms of cognitive sophistication
Flexible understanding of mental states is important for empathy, planning, deceiving (and avoiding being deceived), learning and dealing with other people

Question 23

What is the unexpected contents task?

Answer 23

‘What’s in this container?’’
[surprising contents are revealed]
‘What would your friend say was in it?’
This task has an additional question
‘When I first showed you this, what did you think was inside it?’ - 3 year olds reply incorrectly with the actual contents
Children can’t predict other people mental state, nor acknowledge their own mistaken belief

Question 24

Does the outcome of the unexpected contents task occur because children forget the first thing they said?

Answer 24

No, the study with a doll’s house proves there is no problem with working memory.
An object was placed inside a doll’s house; it was then replaced with a second object
Two year olds could successfully report what was in the doll’s house first, so they don’t have a problem with working memory (Gopnik and Astington)

Question 25

When does mental state understanding continue to develop until?

Answer 25

Beyond five years

Question 26

When does second order Theory of mind develop?

Answer 26

Around six years old

Question 27

When is the onset of the mental stage emotion?

Answer 27

Understood in others by 12 months

Question 28

When is the onset of the mental stage desire?

Answer 28

c. 18 months

Question 29

When is the onset of the belief mental stage?

Answer 29

4 years

Question 30

When is the onset of the complex belief mental stage?

Answer 30

6 years

Question 31

What is children’s ToM understanding said to be?

Answer 31

Theory-like. Unobservable constructs such as desires and beliefs are used to explain human behaviour.

Question 32

What did Wellman 2002 say children do during childhood in regards of ToM?

Answer 32

Children construct an implicit theory about the way minds work

Question 33

What is the Theory Theory and what does it assume?

Answer 33

It locates the source of improvement in children’s knowledge
It assumes that children’s improved ToM performance is caused by a better understanding of mental states.
Fits in with the finding that first mental states to be understood are ones that are easiest to reason about; emotion > desire > belief

Question 34

What is the false photograph task?

Answer 34

Teddy is on the table
A polaroid photo is taken but not looked at\
Teddy is moved to the c hair
Memory Q - where was teddy when the photo was taken
Test q - where is teddy in the photo

Question 35

What is the false belief task?

Answer 35

Teddy is on the table
Sally leaves the room
Teddy is moved to the chair
Memory q - where was teddy when sally left the room
Test q - where does sally think teddy is

Question 36

How do children perform on the false belief task?

Answer 36

Analogous to the false belief task, but contains NO mental state component
Three year olds do poorly on this test, four and five year olds do better
This suggests same mechanism underlies failure on both tasks

Question 37

How do children answer questions about representations and why?

Answer 37

They fail to answer them correctly, whether in the mind or in a photo - this is not because they don’t understand mental states per se, but they find it difficult to reason well about any representation

Question 38

What is a representation?

Answer 38

This term describes how we mentally represent information about the world.

Question 39

What is meta-representation?

Answer 39

This term describes how we mentally represent information about thoughts, beliefs, and desires (ie representations)

Question 40

What does the false photograph task suggest about mental states?

Answer 40

That mental states are hard for children to think about because they find it difficult to reason well about any representation
In simple terms - thinking about our own thoughts is difficult

Question 41

How is family a factor that affects ToM acquisition?

Answer 41

Family - children who have, in particular, older siblings are more likely to pass FBTs than children without siblings - suggesting social interaction can influence children’s conception of minds.
Families that talk about mental states tend to have children that are more successful at FBTs. (How do you think that made her feel)

Question 42

How is culture a factor that affects ToM acquisition?

Answer 42

Many measures of ToM are language dependent
The age at which better-than-chance performance is reached on ToM tasks varies across cultures between 4 and 7 years
Though specific ages vary, the order in which competences are reached remains the same; emotions, then desires, then beliefs (Avis and Harris 19922 and Vinden 1996)

Question 43

How is executive function a factor influencing ToM acquisition?

Answer 43

Children with stronger inhibitory control IC tend to perform better on measures of false belief
Efs and Theory of mind emerge similar ages, though the direction of causality is unclear
IC may help children to demonstrate their understanding of minds, but there is more to ToM than just inhibiting the wrong response

Question 44

Describe the Onishi and Baillargeon study using gaze-following to study ToM in 15 month olds

Answer 44

It uses the violation of expectancy paradigm, where infants look longer at things they find surprising
Infants were habituated to an actor reaching into one of two boxes to retrieve an object
Then; either the object remained in the same location, or it moved to a new location
Infants watched where the actor reached to get the object

Infants looked longer when the actor reached to where the object is
Than when they reached the empty location
This suggests the infants found this reach to object surprising

The authors suggested that infants have some understanding of beliefs in other people
This was big news - and has prompted discussion, reflection and further research

Question 45

What is one influential suggestion about how we deal with mental states?

Answer 45

That we have two distinct systems for dealing with mental states - one system is fast-but-simple –> implicit and automatic.
The other is slow-but-accurate –> explicit, that we develop by 4 years