DEVELOP Theory of Mind Flashcards
(20 cards)
What is the theory of mind?
Ability to track own mental states. And account for people’s behaviour and make sense of world around us. Understanding mental states, information may be vague, incomplete, or not relevant. Can nevertheless make complex judgements even on scant information. Interpreting mental states can also depend on background knowledge. Intuitively.
What are the precursors to mental- state understanding?
Long before fully linguistic, children orient to other humans, get familiar to human gestures and faces for future.
-New-born’s: orient to human faces.
-6-months: follow other people’s gaze.
-12 month: shared mutual gaze- proto declarative pointing.
Give an examples of humans as goal- orientated agents?
(Woodward, 1998) 9 month old infants habituate to adult reaching for one of two toys.
Then toys swapped, infants see them either reach for same toy of new toy.
9 months looks for longer when adult reaches for other toy, even though habituate to same gesture. Kids don’t show same pattern for non-human reaches (mechanical claw).
Infants get that people have intentions + goal directed actions. Account for this when observing others.
How do 18 months old use mental state awareness to help learn languages?
Asked ‘can you pass me the modi’, if adult looking at one of novel objects, kid will pass that. If not looking at certain thing, 50/50 which is chosen.
Explain Repacholi + Gopnik 1997 study highlighting that people have different desires to themselves.
USA study: kids given choice between broccoli + goldfish crackers, choose GC.
She showed he liked broccoli eating it and that didn’t like goldfish crackers. Then asks toddler to hand some.
-18 months hand broccoli even though they didn’t like it- shows know others have different mental ideas than own.
-> Younger hand goldfish crackers.
2yrs explicitly contrast desires ‘I don’t like, ____ likes’. Not until 3 years children spontaneously use word like think + know.
How do infants quire theory of mind?
Kids understand people driven by intentions from infancy. Not explicit- infants don’t have insight into mental states.
Explicit mental state understanding emerged 12 months- 6 years.
Mental states hard for children to apprehend cause they are-> unsubstantial, frequently non-obvious, rapidly changing, often dependant on real-world knowledge.
What is the false belief task?
Experimentally convenient cause avoid problems many beliefs match up with in reality.
False belief tasks can’t be passed by substituting one’s own beliefs for those of the character in the tasks.
What is the unexpected transfer task?
Character introduced, event to make child believe something. Character leaves. Second event, unseen by the character, occurs this makes the belief false. Character returns + asks question about his/ her belief.
= passing test shows step in cognitive sophistication. Shows flexible understanding of mental states, important for empathy, planning, learning + dealing with others.
What is the unexpected contents task?
Container (smarties) with unexpected contents in it e.g. paperclip. Revealed.
Then asked ‘what would your friend say was in it?’- most three year olds use own knowledge, say paperclips. Task has additional questions. ‘ when first showed you this, what did you think was in it’. 3 year olds incorrectly respond with actual contents.
Can’t predict others mental states + acknowledge own mistaken beliefs.
->Mental state understanding continues beyond 5 years.
What is Second- order Theory of Mind?
Develops around 6 years.
‘John thinks that Mary thinks’.
At what ages are emotions, desires, beliefs and complex beliefs understood?
Emotions: understood by 12 months.
Desires: understood by 18 c. months.
Beliefs: 4 years.
Complex beliefs: 6 years +.
Kids ToM understanding said to be theory-like.
What is Theory theory?
View locates source of improvement in children’s knowledge.
Assumes kids improved ToM performance by better understanding of mental states. Fits findings first mental states to be understood as one that are easiest to reason about emotion> desire> belief.
Can explain findings from non-mental-state tasks.
Outline False Belief Tasks by Zaitchik, 1990?
Take polaroid picture of teddy bear on table. Teddy moved to chair.
Q: Where is teddy in photo? Will answer on chair as if the picture has been updated.
-> 3 year olds do bad, 4-5 year olds to good.
Suggests same mechanism underlies failure on both this an unexpected object. -> struggle to understand contents of someone’s mind + contents of photograph.
Why do kids fail both the unexpected contents task and the false belief task?
Thinking about representations of world.
‘Representations’ refers to mental image, symbols, or concept child creates to represent object, event or idea in real world.
Simple representation enough if we want to think about simple thoughts. But not for complex ideas.
What dies metarepresentational mean?
Term describes how we mentally represent information about thoughts, beliefs, desires (i.e. representations). Think about own thoughts get better at 5 or 6.
How does family effect ToM acquisition?
How does language effect ToM acquisition?
Kids with siblings (older ones) more likely to pass FBTs than children without siblings.
Suggests social interaction can influence kids conception of minds (Perner et al 1994).
Families talking about mental states tend to have children more successful at FBT’s.
=’how do you think that made her feel?’ (scaffolding).
Many ToM language-dependant?
Age at which better- than-chance performance is reached on ToM tasks varies across cultures between 4-7 years.
Specific ages vary, the order in which competences are reached remains same; emotions, then desires then beliefs (Avis & Harris, 1991; Vinden 1996).
How does executive function effect Theory of Mind?
Kids stronger on inhibitory control better on measures of false belief. Executive function + theory of mind emerge similar age, direction of causality unclear.
Executive control may help kids understand mind, but more due to ToM than just inhibiting wrong response.
Do infants understand false beliefs?
Onishi + Baillargeon (2005) gaze following study: infants (15 months) habituated to actor reaching int one of two boxes to get object. Object either stays in same location or moves to new location. Infants watched where the actor reached to get the object.
Infants look for longer when actors reached to where object is than when reached to empty location. Suggests infants found this reach-to-object surprising.
-> suggests infants suprised cause actor’s beliefs different to action, suggests infants have understanding of beliefs in others.
