Theory of Mind (ToM) Flashcards
What is ToM?
Our guesses or “theories” about other people’s minds
- Nobody has access to the contents of other people’s minds
- But we make guesses about what people may be thinking, believing or desiring
- ToM is essential for social interactions
What is false belief?
When other people hold a false belief about the state of the world
e.g. child believes the children are hiding behind the bush, he’s wrong
What is true belief?
When other people hold a true belief about the state of the world
e.g man + woman think the dessert looks yummy, and it is
- Children develop true belief ToM before they develop false belief ToM
- Initial studies showed it develops after 4 years of age, but this is changing
What is the history of ToM?
- History of ToM starts with research with chimpanzees in 1978
- Chimps consistently chose the correct photo that depicts the solution to the problem shown
- Authors concluded that chimps can read other people’s minds
What are criticisms of the history of ToM?
Criticism 1- Are chimps only drawing associations between actions that they see occur frequently together (rather than attributing mental states to others)
Criticism 2- Chimps might be inferring true belifs, but what about false beliefs?
More recent research shows that chimps can understand others’ goals and intentions, but can’t represent other people having “false beliefs” (Call and Tomasello, 2008)
“Perception - goal psychology” vs “Belief - desire psychology”
Orders of ToM
1) What do you think?
2) What do you think that i think?
3) What do you think that i think that you think?
4) What do you think that i think you think that i think?
Most people can do up to 4th order of ToM, after that it becomes cognitively challenging
What are the two methods for assessing ToM?
There are different methods based on age + executive function requirements (e.g. memory, meta-thinking)
Explicit methods: Infants express their thoughts using language
- False-belief tasks, e.g. Smarties task, Sally- Anne task
Implicit methods: Researchers infer infants’ understanding from the infants’ behaviour
- Eye-tracking methods, e.g. Violation of expectation, anticipatory looking
What are the two most common false-belief tasks?
Smarties task + Sally-Anne task
False-belief tasks are based on the idea that as ToM abilities advance, children are able to appreciate that:
- Own thoughts/beliefs/desires might be different from other people’s thoughts/beliefs/desires
- Other people may hold beliefs/thoughts that do not reflect reality (i.e. false beliefs)
What is the smarties task?
Measures children’s ToM about other people’s (false) beliefs and about their own previous (false) thoughts/beliefs
- Child asked what is in a box labelled smarties
- They open the box and see there are pencils in the box
- When asked what their friend might say is in the box they say pencils
What is the Sally-Anne task?
Assesses “true belief” as a control condition (i.e Anne has true belief, Sally has false belief)
- Originally used in explicit ToM tasks
- Adapted to implicit tasks by replacing verbal responding with eye gaze tracking or measuring children’s behavioural response (interaction)
Describe the Sally-Anne task
- Sally has a basket and a marble and Anne has a box
- Sally puts the marble in the basket and goes for a walk
- Anne takes the marble out of the basket and puts it in the box
- Sally comes back, where will Sally look for her marble?
What is violation of expectation?
- Designed as a non-verbal measure of ToM
- Used primarily with infants
Based on the idea that:
-Infants who have ToM will form predictions about how an agent will act next
AND
-If the infants’ prediction doesn’t happen (i.e. violation of expectation), the infant will react with surprise
IN CONTRAST
-Infants’ who don’t have ToM will be oblivious to the event that should have violated their expectation
Describe violation of expectation
- Adaptation of Sally-Anne task, where infants aren’t asked what they think will happen
- Instead, they see images/videos of Sally’s end goal
- Sometimes Sally acts in accordance with the infant’s belief (expected) and sometimes she doesn’t (unexpected)
- Infants’ surprise reaction is assessed using habituation + pupil dilation
- if infants look longer at a stimulus or their pupils dilate more, this indicates they find that stimulus surprising/unexpected. So we can understand what their expectations were
What is anticipatory looking?
- Also designed as a non-verbal measure of ToM
- Also used primarily with infants
- Based on the idea that
-Infants who have ToM will form predictions about how an agent will act next
AND
-Infants will divert their eye gaze to where they predict the agent will go BEFORE the agent happens - Infants’ predictive eye gaze can be measured by using eye tracking
Describe the development of ToM
- Early studies showed a distinct shift in ToM abilities at 4 years of age
- May be because younger children might not have an understanding of other’s minds or can’t express themselves in ways required by the demanding false-belief tasks
- More recent studies show that ToM capacities begin to emerge in younger ages, but not consistently
- New theoretical approaches: 2-step development of ToM
