Theory of mind Flashcards
What is belief based ToM?
Distinction between mind / world
* Requires the notion that a person has a representation of the world, the contents of which may be quite different from the contents of the world itself or from our own beliefs.
* Shift from a situation-based to a representation-based understanding of behaviour.
* Our representation of the world may not align with reality.
What is ToM?
- The insight that people hold mental states and that these govern behaviour.
- Mental states – e.g. belief, desire, goals, etc.
- Allow us to make sense of the social world – to predict and explain people’s actions.
What is desire based ToM?
- People’s desires are idiosyncratic and constantly changing.
- Do children understand that other people may have desires that differ from theirs?
Repacholi & Gopnik (1997) Broccoli/Crackers study - 18m but not 14m understood that the experimenter’s desired food differed from theirs.
- Suggests they understand that desire is a subjective mental state that can differ from person to person.
How can we tell if someone has a ToM?
False belief tasks
* Tests whether child can represent what another person believes in contrast to their own beliefs or reality.
* More useful than true belief task - tests whether child can represent what another person believes when that belief matches their own beliefs or reality
How do we know that 3 year olds don’t have ToM?
- lack of positive evidence doesn’t necessarily mean lack of competence.
- Performance limitations masking children’s competence?
- problem with language?
– temporal marking
– test question – “where will maxi look first of all?” (Siegal & Beattie, 1991)
– story comprehension (Lewis et al. 1994) - Simplifying the task improves performance but not dramatically
- Make the test question more specific.
- Check children’s comprehension.
What is the unexpected transfer task?
(Wimmer & Perner, 1983)
* while Maxi is out playing, his Mum takes the chocolate from the cupboard and grates some of it into a cake.
* Maxi is returning from play, feeling hungry. He wants his chocolate.
* Test Q: Where will Maxi look for his chocolate?
* Memory Q: Where did Maxi put his chocolate?
* Reality Q: Where did Mum put his chocolate.
* > 5 yrs judge that maxi will look for the chocolate where he put it.
* < 5 yrs judge that maxi will look where they will look (fridge)
* If children show false belief they will say look in the cupboard, if they don’t they will say look in the fridge.
What is the deceptive box test?
Perner et al. (1987)
* What is inside this tube? (guess)
* What is in it? (see)
* What will your friend xxx say is inside? (predict)
Gopnik and Astington (1988)
* When you first saw this tube, before we opened it, what did you think was inside?
* 3-4yr old difficulty acknowledging false belief in others and own prior false belief once know what is inside
What are the false belief task findings?
- 3-year-old children usually fail FB tasks
- 4-year-old children usually pass FB tasks
Traditionally taken as evidence that around this time children ‘acquire’ a theory of mind. - I.e. Radical conceptual shift and stage-like development around 4 years
- But perhaps the FB task underestimates younger children’s ability?
What are 2 factors that contribute to ToM development?
- Role of social experience in aiding understanding of mental states –arises from interactions from other people.
- Biological maturation enables children to express their understanding of mental states – arises from improvement in executive functioning.
What is said of the role of experience in ToM?
Harris (1999)
* Conversations in general are crucial for exposing children to other people’s perspectives.
* They provide children with the vocabulary needed to discuss and reflect on mental states.
* Children with older siblings show earlier ToM (Perner, Ruffman, & Leekham, 1994; Ruffman, Perner, Naito, Parkin, & Clements,1998)
* Children whose parents talk about mental states more understand false belief earlier than other children (Dunn et al., 1991; Meins et al 2002; Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002)
* Deaf children of hearing parents show a developmental lag on FB taks (Peterson & Siegel, 1995)
* In contrast, deaf children of signing parents are comparable with hearing children (Peterson & Siegal, 1999)
The universality of ToM: Cross-cultural comparisons (Callaghan et al., 2005)
- Despite leading very different lives children in industrialized societies and those in more rural societies show similar developmental shift between 3 and 5 years.
- 3 – systematically failing
- 5 – systematically passing
- 4 – only one group systematically different from chance
- Children in diff societies show similar developmental shift.
- Developmental trajectory similar – biological reasoning for this similarity.
- Could be parents providing children with the same exposure or scaffolding for language.
What is the role of executive functioning in ToM?
- Children’s failures on ToM tasks may stem not from pure conceptual limitations but rather from problems translating conceptual knowledge into successful action.
> critical role of executive functions in ability to pass ToM tasks. - Executive functions: A set of domain-general cognitive abilities that help us to control and guide our attention and behaviour.
1. Inhibition
2. Cognitive flexibility
3. Working memory
Wellman, Cross & Watson meta-analysis 2001
- Support for substantial developmental effect over preschool years:
< 3.5yrs below chance
> 4yrs above chance - Which task variables make a difference?
issue - type of task/question, nature of protagonist/object irrelevant
strength - deceptive motive, active participation and salience of mental state improve performance.
Wellman et al (2001) concluded that: - Although manipulating several variables improved performance, this was the case across all ages rather than just younger children –not selectively unmasking early competence.
- None of the variable manipulations improved performance of 3yos above chance.
What is inhibition?
Ignoring distracting information or suppressing unwanted responses
What is cognitive flexibility?
Responding to the same thing in different ways depending on the context
What is working memory?
- Holding important information or your ‘goal’ in mind
- Manipulating information in your head
What are the biological constraints of executive functions?
- The frontal lobes of the brain are very important for executive functions
- They take a long time to develop
- Important developments in Inhibitory control (IC) take place in the first 6 years of life, with marked improvement between age 3 and 6
(Diamond & Taylor, 1996)
The role of executive functioning in false belief tasks
- Evidence of strong positive correlation between children’s inhibitory control (e.g. on Bear/Dragon task) and FB performance (Carlson & Moses, 2001; Sabbagh et al., 2007)
- Suggests that: development in IC and ToM may be related.
- IC may be a crucial enabling factor for ToM development, possibly affecting both the emergence and expression of mental state knowledge.
Onishi & Baillargeon (2005) – looking time study with 15m olds
- Familiarise infant to an event.
- Present test behaviour that is either: Consistent or inconsistent with the prior event.
- If infant looks longer at inconsistent event taken as evidence that they are surprised
- Indicates some level of knowledge about what should happen.
- Eye tracking
- Shown yellow box, green box, watermelon toy and a person.
False belief - Left the scene after putting watermelon in green box.
- 🍉 moved to the yellow box
- On trial she reached into green box and other condition reached into yellow
- If understand false belief – look longer at her reaching into the yellow box (longer looking time)
True belief - Present when 🍉 moved to yellow box.
- Should be surprised when looking in the green box.
- Longer looking time when reached into the green box.
Implicit understanding of FB Moll et al. (2016) method
- Investigated children’s facial expressions as indices of their belief understanding.
- Predicted that if 3 yos perceive the conflict between a person’s belief and reality, they will show signs of suspense (e.g. lip biting and brow furrowing) when observing an actor about to act on basis of their false belief.
- Cookie monster puppet – taking cookies from a jar.
Results - Implicit understanding of FB Moll et al. (2016) method
Results
* Found greater instances of expressed tension in the false belief cf. true belief condition.
- Suggests 3 yos expressed knowledge of another’s false belief and recognised the affective consequences of the false belief.
* In contrast, children’s performance on a classic FB task was poor and unrelated to the amount of expressions they displayed while watching the FB videos
- suggests expressions are independent from and emerge prior to explicit knowledge of false beliefs.
Implicit understanding of FB Clements & Perner, 1994
- Aim: to get evidence for a period of implicit understanding of FB that precedes the onset of explicit understanding
- Method: Tested 44 children aged 2y5m – 4y6m on ‘unexpected transfer task’
- Implicit measure – anticipatory looking
- Explicit measure – standard verbal response
Anticipatory looking paradigm - Measure the direction of an infant/child’s first look after an event.
- Participants’ looking behaviour is analysed to determine if they correctly expect/anticipate what will happen next.
- Requires prediction (cf. with VOE, which relies on reactive looking)
Results - Implicit understanding of FB Clements & Perner, 1994
- 86% children over 2y11m showed looking pattern indicative of FB understanding.
- Only 1 child under 2y11m
Dissociation of implicit - explicit understanding of belief
- 3yr olds looked to correct location even though gave incorrect answer!
- Large gap between implicit and explicit understanding from 2y11m
- Data suggest that children develop an implicit or unconscious understanding of false belief at an earlier age than they develop an explicit or conscious understanding.
