Theory of Mind

Question 1

What is the theory of mind?

Answer 1

The ability to infer mental states to oneself and others (Premack and Woodruff, 1978).
Understanding other’s beliefs, knowledge, desires, intentions…
It involves understanding that others’ mental states may differ from one’s own or reality.
Presumes information of mental states which cannot be directly observable.

Question 2

What is false belief?

Answer 2

When one’s own or others’ beliefs or representations about the work might contradict reality.
The ability to understand the mismatch is the False Belief Understanding ability.

Question 3

How do you measure false belief understanding?

Answer 3

Standard tests
Change of Location task: Wimmer and Perner (1983); Baron-Cohen et al. (1985)
Unexpected Contents task: Perner et al. (1987)
Unexpected Identity task: Gopnik and Astington (1988)

Question 4

Explain the change of location task (Wimmer & Perner, 1983).

Answer 4

“Maxi task”.
Children were shown two sketches.
Maxi put his chocolate in the cupboard, then, in his absence, his mum put it in the fridge.
Participants were asked where Maxi would look for his chocolate when he returned.
3 - 9 year old participants took part
0% of 3 -4 year olds,
57% of 4 to 6 year olds,
86% of 6 to 9 year olds passed the test.

Question 5

Explain the change of location task (Baron-Cohen et al, 1985).

Answer 5

“Sally-Anne task”
The researchers were interested in whether children with ASD had false belief understanding abilities.
The experimenter acted out a scenario where Sally put her marble in one location then, in her absence, her friend changed the location.
Different from Maxi test, real toys.
They tested 27 TD children, 20 children with ASD and 14 children with Down Syndrome.

Question 6

Explain unexpected contents task (Perner et al, 1987).

Answer 6

Children are presented with a familiar container with unexpected contents inside. They are asked what their initial opinion was (self) and what a friend would think (other) Less than 40% of 3-year-olds passed both self and other FBU.

Question 7

Explain unexpected identity tasks (Flavell et al., 1983; Gopink & Astingen, 1988).

Answer 7

“Appearance-reality task”
3,4 and 5-year-olds were shown a sponge that looked like a rock.
They were then allowed to touch the sponge to discover the real identity.
This task also measures first-person and third-person false belief understanding.
50% more than and equal to 3-year-olds and less than 65% of 5-year-olds unexpected reality.

Question 8

What are the aim of doing meta-anlysis for language and theory of mind: meta-analysis of relation between language ability and fbu?

Answer 8

Determine the relation between language and FBU.
Examine the potential moderators of this relations.

Question 9

What was the inclusion and exclusion criteria of language and theory of mind: meta-analysis of relation between language ability and fbu?

Answer 9

Typically developing
English speaking
More than 7 years old
Standardised languages
At least one first-order FU task
Training studies were excluded

Question 10

What are the results of language and theory of mind: meta-analysis of relation between language ability and fbu?

Answer 10

Significant relation between children’s language and FBU independence of age, gender, time of the study, published/ unpublished
All aspects of language are involved in the relation with FBU.
Memory for complements accounted for 44% of the variance while receptive vocabulary accounted for 12%.
Relation between language and FBU appears bidirection.

Question 11

Explain the reading in the mind in the eyes RMET (Baron-Cohen, 2001) experiment.

Answer 11

Requires recognition of facial emotion.
Common measure validated in part by weak performance of those with ASD.
However, alexithymia can occur with ASD.
Results suggested RMET measures emotion recognition.

Question 12

Define alexithymia.

Answer 12

The inability to recognise or describe one’s own emotions.

Question 13

List the factors influencing children’s performance.

Answer 13

Executive functions
Language
Family and social environment

Question 14

What does executive functions do?

Answer 14

Essential cognitive processes that enable complex goal-directed behaviour.
An unbrella term that encompasses higher order processes that support adaptive responses to novel complex situations.
The three core executive functions that are agreed upon are inhibition
Working Memory
Cognitive flexibility
Performance on false belief tasks is related to performance on executive function takes (e.g Lece et al, 2017).

Question 15

What does language do?

Answer 15

Correlations between false belief understanding and language skills (e.g Milligan et al, 2007)
Comprehension of mental state terms.
Grammatical structure knowledge such as complement clauses.
Different languages work differently.
Using words such as “where will she looks first” helps children.

Question 16

What does family and social environment do?

Answer 16

Children from larger families perfomed better (Perner et al, 1994).
Children with older siblings performed better (Ruffman et al, 1998).
Children who spoke their mental states to their friends and siblings performed better (Brown et al, 1996)
The number of days spent with playmates predicted ToM performance (Shohaeian, 2015)

Question 17

Explain the undertanding others’ desires (Repatholi & Gopnik, 1997).

Answer 17

14 and 18 moth olds
Experimenter presents two bowls of food: one of crackers (appealing food), one of broccoli (unappealing food).
Child tastes each food and tells Experimenter which one they prefer.
The Experimenter tastes each food and produces an emotional expression.
Experimenter holds her hand out and asks the child “Can you give me some?” (without looking at or indicating either bowl).
18 month olds gave the food Experimenter was happy about, even if it was not the one they themselves preferred. 14- month olds gave the food they preferred.

Question 18

Explain the deception in 3-year-olds (Lewis et al, 1989).

Answer 18

33 to 37 months old children’s ability to deceive.
They were asked not to peek at a surprise toy, left alone, and later asked if they did.
Only 4 out of 33 did not peek
38% admitted they peeked
38% denied
24% gave no response
Boys were more likely to admit than girls.

Question 19

How does parasocial and theory of mind link?

Answer 19

Meta analysis of ToM ajnd and parasocial behaviours across 76 studies including 6500 children aged between 2 -12 (lmuta et al, 2017)
Helping, comforting, sharing and cooperation.
ToM measures of cognitive and affective perspective taking (CPT and APT)
Overall positive correlation
APT had stronger correlations than CPT

Question 20

How does age differences and theory of mind link?

Answer 20

A meta-analytic review of age differences in Theory of Mind (Henry et al, 2013)
They looked at 23 datasets (~1500
participants)
* Domain: “hot” (affective) and “cold”
(cognitive) or mixed ToM
* Modality: verbal, visual-static, visual-
dynamic, verbal and visual-static, and
verbal and visual-dynamic
* The mean age between young and old
groups should be at least 25 years
* Across all types of tasks, older adults (>65)
were considered to have poorer ToM
compared to younger adults (<56)