Theory of Mind Flashcards
(26 cards)
Define theory of mind
The ability to ascribe mental states to ones self and to others.
What does theory of mind lead to
Leads to the understanding that mental states do not always accurately reflect reality
What do we orient towards before becoming fully linguistic
Orient towards humans/human faces
What can we do at 6 months old?
Follow other people’s gaze
What can we do at 12 months ol
shared mutual faze, protodeclarative pointing
Theory of mind and language learning
From 18 months old, children use their mental state awareness to help them learn language
Discuss Repacholi & Gopniks study into theory of mind
-food stimuli given - crackers and brocolli
-assumed 18m would love crackers and hate brocolli
-researcher pretend to hate crackers and love brocolli
- researchers then ask the children to pass them some food
findings of repacholi and gopniks study
15 m - gave researcher crackers
18m - understood researcher loved brocolli as they understood
conclusion from this study
-shows the ability to think about somoene having other mental states than your own.
At what point does explicit mental state understanding emerge, as infants don’t have insight into mental states
Explicit mental state understanding emerges between 12 months and 6 years
Why are mental states difficult for young children to apprehend?
Insubstantial, non-obvious rapidly changing, and dependent on real world knowledge
What can infants use to help them with this?
Heuristics - thoughts tend to correspond closely with other people
Extending their own knowledge to other people is a useful heuristic for children.
What are false beliefs
False beliefs are experimentally convenient as they avoid the problem that many beliefs match up with reality
What are false belief tasks
False belief tasks cannot be passed by substituting ones own beliefs for those of the characters in the tasks
Unexpected transfer task
Character is introduced.
Event happens that induces a true belief; the character leaves
A second event, unseen by character, occurs, making the belief false
Character returns - question is asked
Passing this shows step forward in cognitive sophistication
Unexpected content task
give a kid an object and ask what they think is inside
an unexpected substance comes out
Kids are asked what they thought was in the box before
They answer with what they saw
At what age do these mental states arise - emotions, desires, beliefs, complex beleifs, second order theory of mind
Emotions - 12 months
Desires - 18 months
Beliefs - 4 years
Complex belief - 6 years
Second order theory of mind - 6 years.
False photograph task
Two objects
Chair/table
Teddy on the table
Takes a pic of the bear
Picture face down
Changes location of the teddy to the chair
Memory: Where was teddy when the photo was taken
TEST Q: Where is teddy in the photo
Results of the false photo graph
3 years - poorly
4/5 - do better
Suggests some mechanism underlies faolure on both tasks
Children struggle to understand the contents of someones mind and about the content of a photograph
Not thinking about the wolrd but instead a representation of the world
Define representation
Refers to a mental image, suymbol or concept that a child creates to represent an object, event, or idea in the real world
Metarepresentation
term describes how we mentally represent information about thoughts, beliefs, desires
What factors can affect theory of mind/representation - in children’s development
Family
Culture
Executive function
Family
children with siblings may do better at these tasks
Suggests social interaction can influence children’s conception of minds
Families that talk about mental states tend to have children that are more successful.
Culture
Measures can be language dependent.
