Theory of Mind (Sally-Anne Study) Flashcards
What is Theory of Mind?
The ability to understand other people’s thoughts/feelings and the awareness that people have their own views and opinions.
Who tested for the presence of theory of mind in toddlers?
Meltzoff.
What is a false belief task?
A task used to assess if someone had theory of mind.
Outline Meltzoff’s study.
-Children watched adults place beads into a jar.
-Experimental condition= adults appeared to struggle with placing the beads in the jar.
-Control condition= adults had no difficulty in placing beads into the jar.
What did Meltzoff find?
All children successfully placed the beads into the jar. Implying that the children were imitating what the adults intended to do rather than what they actually did.
Outline Baron-Cohen et al’s Sally-Anne study.
-Quasi experiment
-20 autistic children
-14 down syndrome children
-27 children with no disorder
-Researcher controlled two dolls, and placed marble in a basket.
-Other doll moved it into a box
-Asked two control questions, “Where was the marble originally?” and “Where is the marble now?”
-Asked a critical question, “where would Sally expect to find the marble?”
What were the findings of the Sally-Anne study?
Answered critical question correctly:
-85% of ‘normal’ children
-86% of down syndrome children.
-20% of autistic children
What was concluded from the Sally-Anne study?
Autistic children could not distinguish between what they believed and what Sally believed, they lack a theory of mind.
Give advantages of the Theory of Mind.
+High practical validity.
Adds to the understanding of autism. However, a psychologist added that research does not support the idea that issues with the ToM are specific to autism.
ToM may not be as closely linked with autism as originally thought.
+Supporting evidence for the existence of ToM from Meltzoff and Perner’s studies.
Give disadvantages of the Theory of Mind.
-False belief tasks have low validity and are not a reliable measure of ToM.
They are requiring that the child already has a lot of cognitive skills. It doesn’t take everything into account.
-Flawed methodology.
Young children may fail to understand ToM tasks such as that used by Perner. They cannot make sense of the complex questioning and language in the study.
This makes the results unreliable.
