Theory Of Mind Flashcards
Theory of Mind
- A theory of mind is a well-organized understanding of how the mind works and how it influences behavior.
- People have desires
- People have beliefs - based on information
- People act in terms of their beliefs & desires
there is a reason as to why someone is doing something - is not random
Standard View: Theory of Mind Develops after infancy
- A theory of mind (TOM) is a well-organized understanding of how the mind works and how it influences behaviour.
STANDARD VIEW
-
Two-year-olds: Understand the connection between other
people’s desires and their specific actions, but show little
understanding that beliefs are also influential -
ex: they understand someone might want something different then them
like to find the marble but they dont understand they might not think the same as them like where the marble is when misplaced
-
Three-year-olds: Understand that desires and beliefs affect
behaviour, but have difficulty with false-belief problems - Five-year-olds: Find false-belief problems very easy
Testing Children’s Theory of Mind
false belif test
- The Smarties task is frequently used to study preschoolers’ understanding of false beliefs.
- Most 3-year-olds answer like the child in the cartoon, which suggests a lack of understanding that people’s actions are based on their own
beliefs, even when those beliefs deviate from what the child knows to be true
sally and anns
false - belif test
- sally plays with a marble, put the marble in the basket and leaves the room
- anne takes the marble from the basket and moves it to a box
- then they ask the child where would sally belive the marble is or where she would look for the marble
pass: its in the basket
fail: its in the box
2 1/2 olds fail the test
4-5 olds pass the test
Nativist or CORE Approach to TOM
- Onishi & Baillargeon
- There from the beginning
- An ability to distinguish a “true” state of affairs, from what one believes to be a true state of affairs on the basis of limited knowledge
(a “false” belief) - Series of studies with infants, first at 15 months
- Subsequently took down to 7- months
Onishi & Baillargeon, Science, 2005
“Do 15-month-old infants Understand False Beliefs?”
take a pice of watermelon and put in one of the box> she leaves > watermelon moves to another box
will the child be suprise if she looks more at the second change (when she wasnt there/yelow box) - because it means tehy have false belif
Infant performance in other tasks provides additional evidence that they do act as if they understand, at some level, that other agents do act on the basis of intentions
Evidence that infants do understand intention
- Meltzoff (1995)
- After observing failed actions by humans,**infants imitate intended action ** - understand goal oriented behaviour
- After observing failed actions by non-humans,infants imitate failed action -do understand goal oriented behaviour in non-humans
some for of belif understanding
- Poulin-Dubois (1999)
- Children surprised by inanimate objects moving on their own, not by animate objects moving on their own
The “Blob” study:
Infants treat Contingency as agent-like behavior
METHOD: Gaze Following
Infants aged 6-7 months gaze-
follow other people’s gaze;
They also “gaze” follow the blob if it
has previously acted
contingently (with them, or with
another agent) OR if it has a face
And they understand that looking is goal directed
** By 12 months, they expect that others’ gaze will indicate there is something there** (& are surprised if not)
- By 12 months also show longer looking to a change in object
of attention than in direction of attention (as in reaching) - Taken as evidence that by 12 mos, infants interpret looking as a goal directed action
over all
infants even as 18months have some theory of mind just not as define/complexed as later on
these development of theory of mind is pretty much universal
false belief
an incorrect assumption about reality that is maintained despite evidence to the contrary
