cognition and development -social cognition (theory of mind)

Question 1

what is theory of mind?

Answer 1

.ability each of us has to mind-read
.personal theory of belief about what other people know, are feeling or thinking

Question 2

what does theory of mind link to?

Answer 2

.autism

Question 3

why does autism link to ToM?

Answer 3

.autistic children may find taking others’ perspectives difficult and take literal interpretations, possibly due to a ToM deficit - known as ‘mind-blindness’

Question 4

why are there different methods for testing theory of mind?

Answer 4

.because it is dependent on age

Question 5

what age does theory of mind develop?

Answer 5

.3-4 years

Question 6

what was the first method used to research theory of mind?

Answer 6

.intentional reasoning research

Question 7

what age is intentional reasoning research used for?

Answer 7

.toddlers

Question 8

who conducted intentional reasoning research?

Answer 8

.Meltzoff (1988)

Question 9

what was involved in intentional reasoning research?

Answer 9

.demonstrated 18-month-olds imitate adults intentions (not actions), by putting beads in a jar, so have basic ToM

Question 10

what was the second method for researching ToM?

Answer 10

.false belief task

Question 11

what age is used for false belief tasks?

Answer 11

.3-4 years old

Question 12

what was the false belief task called?

Answer 12

.sally-anne task

Question 13

who conducted the sally-Anne task?

Answer 13

.simon-baron cohen 1985

Question 14

what did the sally-Anne task involve?

Answer 14

.children told story involving two dolls, Sally and Anne
.anne moves Sally’s marble into her box while Sally is away
.in order to grasp Sally doesn’t know Anne has moved the marble, requires an understanding of Sally’s false belief about where it is

Question 15

what was the procedure of the sally-Anne task when introduced autism children?

Answer 15

.task given to 20 autistic children, 27 non-autistic children and 14 children with Downes syndrome

Question 16

what were the findings of the autism and sally-Anne task?

Answer 16

.only 20% ASD successful vs 85% non-AS.
.led to conclude that ToM is rare in ASD

Question 17

what was the last method to research theory of mind?

Answer 17

.eyes task

Question 18

who conducted the eyes task?

Answer 18

.simon-baron cohen 1997

Question 19

who did the eyes task assess?

Answer 19

.older children/young adults

Question 20

what did the eye task involve?

Answer 20

.involves reading complex emotions in pictures or faces just showing a small area around the eyes

Question 21

what was the procedure and findings to the eyes task?

Answer 21

.older autistic children and adults did well on false beliefs tasks, so Baron-Cohen et al had people identify complex emotions by looking at eyes in isolation where he found autistic adults less successful, so also have ToM deficits.

Question 22

what was a positive to the theory of mind?

Answer 22

.research to support -baron cohen and meltzoff

Question 23

what were the negatives to the theory of mind?

Answer 23

.low validity of false belief tasks -false belief tasks may test memory as well as ToM eg -bloom and German found that children with ToM can struggle with false belief tasks and performance improved with visual aids
.correlation not causation -although ASD is associated with problems in ToM, may not be the cause of ASD -ToM deficits are not specific to ASD and not all people with ASD have ToM deficits so, ToM deficits is only a partial explanation