Theory of Mind Flashcards
What is theory of mind?
Ability to attribute mental states to ourselves and others (thoughts, beliefs, intentions, desires, knowledge)
Thinking about what others think about
What strategies would be used to understand the unobservable content of other minds?
Track beliefs of others based on their history
Make mental state inferences about observable actions
Take perspective of someone else and see things from their point of view
What can theory of mind help us to do?
Predict future actions and behaviours
Reason about past behaviour
Communicate with others effectively
Feel empathy for another’s situation
Deceive others and detect deception
Avoiding offense
Gift purchasing
Is theory of mind uniquely human?
Non-human primates
- assess visual perspective of others
- use this knowledge to decide which food to compete for
- will base decisions on their dominance in group
Western Scrub-Jays = cache food, pilfer others’ caches, re-cache based on whether they were observed
Theory of Mind in animals controversial
Perspective-taking abilities heavily studied
Is it as fully developed as it is in human? - conflicting desires, beliefs, intentions
How can beliefs be used in Theory of Mind?
Understanding others’ minds (Dennett, 1978)
People hold beliefs
Their beliefs predict their behaviour
Can young children may inferences about true beliefs?
Yes but they could be based on their own knowledge
What is the Unexpected Transfer Test (Wimmer and Perner, 1983)?
Maxi put chocolate in cupboard then Mum moved it to the fridge
Questions
- where will Maxi look for his chocolate?
- where did Maxi put his chocolate?
- where did Mum put his chocolate?
3 year olds fail the belief question
Some 4 year olds pass
Most 5-6 year olds pass
What is the deceptive box task?
Test of false belief
Asked what’s inside the box
Takes pencil out of tube
Ask what friend would say
3 and young 4 year olds fail
When first saw tube, what did you think was inside? - replication with additional question
What are explicit tasks?
Children asked to explicitly report contents of another mind
What are implicit tasks?
Children imply that they are aware of other minds through their behaviour
What is the unexpected preference test?
Implicit test
Conversation about favourite food
Researcher says favourite food is broccoli
When asked to give favourite snack to research
18 month olds could understand experimenter had different preference
14 month olds could not
What are the studies surrounding the understanding of deception?
Actively trying to deceive another person implies understanding of minds
3 year old children told convincing lies about doing something that was forbidden (Lewis et al, 1989)
2-5 year old children destroyed all tell-tale evidence to prevent competitor finding hidden treasure (Chandler et al, 1989)
3-4 year old children changed content of a familiar container in order to trick the experimenter (Sullivan and Winner, 1993)
Is the development of Theory of Mind a rapid conceptual shift?
Early studies seem to provide converging evidence that children rapidly acquire a concept of “belief” around 4th birthday
If this is the case, should predict
- consistency across studies/measures = not
- perfect performance in older children/adults = not
- universal “flip” in performance = not
What was the change to unexpected transfer test that altered the results?
Cognitive demands limit a young child’s ability to pass
Two changes helped 3 year olds performance
Protagonist didn’t leave the room (just turned around)
Children asked to enact the search phase
Success increased from 22% to 80%
What was the mailing procedure of the deceptive box test (Mitchell and Lacohee, 1991)?
Draw picture of what thought inside the box, then mailed, then showed what’s inside the box
“when you mailed your picture, what did you think was inside the box?”
60% of 3 year olds answered correctly (compared to 20% of correct answers in standard version of task)
