Theory of Mind

Southgate et al. familiarisation trials.

(a) to show the infants that the actor's goal was to obtain the hidden ball (b) to teach the infants that when the windows were illuminated and a chime sounded, one of the windows was about to open.

Signs of ToM before aged 2

- Capable of initiating pretend play & of understanding the pretence of others (Leslie, 1994). - Attribute goals to other agents (Csibra et al., 1999, Gergely et al., 1995, Woodward, 1998). - Imitate the intended, plus completed actions of other agents (Carpenter et al., 1998, Meltzoff, 1995). - use eye gaze as a cue to what someone is attending to when they use a new word (Baldwin, 1991)

Why use the false belief task?

1. Informative about a child/animal's successful conceptual abilities. 2. The false belief task can be used to explore the relative difficulty of reasoning about different representations, including beliefs, photographs, & drawings. 3. Diagnose & study older children/adults with cognitive & linguistic impairments. 4. Studies of the factors that improve/diminish performance on the task- relate to theories of how children cope with multiple representations. 5. Ingenious task that explores people's understanding of the minds of others.

Premack & Woodruf (1978)

1. Investigated ToM understanding in Chimpanzees 2. Showed 4 videos of a human actor with problems to solve 3. Chimpanzees were able to choose the correct method for how the human could resolve the situation 4. Use mental states to define and predict behaviour

Theories of ToM

1. Modulation Theory 2. Theory, theory 3. Simulation Theory

Baron-Cohen et al (1985) findings convey

1. The control questions: reality & memory shows children regardless of disability have implicit understanding. 2. Autistic children did not appreciate the difference between their own and the doll's knowledge- Unable to have ToM. Cognitive deficit. 3. However, employing Leslie's model (1984)- autistics have ability for second-order representations, then they would also show evidence of an ability to pretend play.

Southgate et al. (2007) results

17/20 first look to correct window on FB trial Look longer at the correct window than incorrect window

Baron-Cohen et al. method (1985)

20 autistic, 14 Downs Syndrome & 27 typical developed preschoolers. 1. Naming question: which doll was which. 2. Belief question: "Where will Sally look for her marble?" 3. Reality question: "Where is the marble really?" 4. Memory question: "Where was the marble in the beginning?"

Gonzales, Fabricius and Kupfer's method, 2017.

236 participants Children completed four tasks: self‐seeing, other seeing, self‐knowing, and other knowing. In each, children were asked questions about both the presence (see & know) & absence (not see & not know) of each mental state, & had to answer both questions correctly to pass the task. The order of all four tasks was randomised. The effect of person was tested by examining the difficulty of the self versions of the tasks compared to the other versions.

Southgate et al. (2007) findings mean

25-month-old infants correctly attribute a false belief to another person and anticipate that person's behavior in accord with this false belief.

True belief & behaviour

3 year olds cannot predict someone else's behaviour when that person has a false belief (as in Sally-Anne/Smarties tasks).

Shatz et al. 1983

3 year olds could distinguish between mental states & reality - " I thought it was an alligator. Now I know it's a crocodile. " Language - understanding the difference between "knowing" & "believing"

Gonzales (2018) review

3 year olds fail ToM because: Tasks are hard and often too demanding Generally 3 years olds have slower processing - do the tasks account for this? Language - understanding the difference between "knowing" & "believing" (Shatz et al., 1983) Language syntax development - embedded clauses (deVilliers & deVilliers, 2000) Normally developing EF - inhibition control, disentangling from salient information

Maxi task results

3-4 year old fail, 4-5 understand, 6- fully understand false beliefs. Shows that young children do not understand that Maxi's beliefs about the world are different than how the world really is: DO NOT understand predictions the actual state of the world.

Carpenter & Chandler, 1996

5- 8 year olds a false representation task based on Maxi task. Children were given a second task- a drawing of a duck/rabbit . Once children understood both interpretations, introduced to a puppet, Ann. 'Show the picture to Ann, what would she say? How can you tell what she will think? Why is it hard to tell what Ann thinks? 5 year olds did not appreciate another person to interpret image & cannot predict interpretation Argued that even after children succeed false-belief tasks, years until they are fully aware that the mind is always an interpreter of reality.

Family member & ToM

A child's interaction with other members of their family will have an effect on theory of mind development.

Second order ToM (Perner and Wimmer, 1985)

A second-order belief is one that involves understanding that someone else can have beliefs about a third person. John, Mary & the ice-cream van story Asks participants to think about what the think John thinks Mary is thinking Increased difficulty levels Age 6 pass "I think he thinks she thinks his potato sculpture is good"

Charman et al. method (2000)

A small sample (N=13) of infants, for whom measures were collected at 20 months including: 1. Play: child played with toys 2. Joint attention: 3 active toy tasks were conducted- playing with robot, pig & car, eyes blocking & teasing. 3: Imitation: 4 actions were modelled on objects designed to be unfamiliar to the child: a hinged toy, a black box & a small orange plastic egg. Ambiguous goal orientated task

False belief task

A type of task used in theory-of-mind studies, in which the child must infer that another person does not possess knowledge that he or she possesses (that is, that other person holds a belief that is false).

Southgate et al. (2007)

Action Anticipation Through Attribution of False Belief by 2-Year-Olds

Intentionality detector

Activated whenever there is perceptual input via senses

Metarepresentation

An understanding of the distinction between what is being referred to (the referent) & what it is represented as. E.g. a photograph is a representation not a copy.

Anchoring to improve of ToM

Anchoring mental perception can create a belief of reality that overrides the false belief - Mitchell & Lacohee (1991) - deceptive box - post box and drawings Saltmarsh & Mitchell (1995) - use of a camera to facilitate representation of one's original belief - Anchoring

Theory of mind

Appreciating that others have different set 'of beliefs than their own; an important part of human cognition. Term coined by Premack & Woodruf, 1978

Harris, 1991

Argued that by simulation, children can work out not only other people's emotions but also their desires and beliefs. Simulating another's behaviour may help a child work out what is in someone else's mind- help to interpret others beliefs & behaviours.

Perner (1991)

Argued that the most important aspect of understanding the mind occurs when a child has acquired the concept of 'metarepresentation'. Younger children can understand a lot about minds but can do so without the the understanding of the nature of mental representations. Most emphasis on a major change in representational thinking at aged 4: major achievement.

Lempers et al. 1977

Asked 2 year old to show another person a picture glued to the inside of a box. Needs to be at an angle for others to see it. Children understand to move hand over eyes to see it. By 3, children realise the relationship between seeing & knowing.

Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RMET)

Baron - Cohen et al. (1997, 2001) Uses the eyes to explore the ability to assess mental states from the eye region Males have difficulty with sadness ASD participants cannot use the eyes to predict mental states

ASD on false belief tasks

Baron- Cohen et al., 1985: 80%+ typical developed & down syndrome children suceed Sally-Ann task 20% ASD children were successful Not learning difficulty- signify difficulty in understanding people's minds, thoughts & beliefs. Difficulty in mental representations

What leads to the development of ToM?

Baron-Cohen's (1995) modularity theory: mechanistic theory Four basic modules: 1. Intentionality detector 2. Eye-direction detector 3. Shared attention mechanism 4. ToM mechanism

Shared attention mechanism

Builds triadic representations: combines information about your own direction of gaze & another person's direction of gaze. Gain insights into another's mental state: fondation of children's later understanding of mind.

Gonzales, Fabricius and Kupfer's findings, 2017

By 2 years- children reported when they did see & did not see an object but not for another until aged 3. By 4 years- children correctly reported when they knew & did not know the currently unseen contents of boxes but not for another person until aged 4. Both main effects of person & mental state, & no interaction

Masangkay et al 1974

Card with a drawing of a cat one one side & dog drawing on the other. Child saw one side-experimenter saw the other. Young children, 3 year olds, appreciate that different people have different knowledge about the world, or less.

ERP (event-related potential)

Carlson et al. (2013) review ToM literature Negative - Going Late Slow Wave (LSW) in PFC Links to the domain general higher order operations in working memory Adults & children ages 4 - 6 who passed FB tasks showed LSW Those who failed FB LSW was absent

Baron- Cohen et al. results (1985)

Children WITHOUT THEORY OF MIND will think that Sally will look in box- that's where ball is 4 year olds realise she will look in her basket while 3 year olds says she will look in the box. 80% of children with ASD fail this task - Age range Ages 10 - 15 Compares with TD group and Downs Syndrome ASD repeatedly point to the marble/doll. Children can't really be successful at this task until about 4. Children under 4 are unable to consider the situations of other

Introspection

Children attend to distinct phenomenological characteristics of their own mental states, & then learn to attribute these mental states to others.

'Implicit' understanding

Children have some understanding but are unaware/unconscious of own understanding.

Experimental condition (Tomasello & Haberl, 2003)

Children of both ages chose the new object significantly more often than would be expected by chance. 12- & 18-month-olds can identify which of several objects is new to another person based on her past visual experience (knowledge by acquaintance).

Gonzales, Fabricius and Kupfer's findings mean, 2017

Children passing the self versions of the tasks before passing the other versions strongly suggests a role for introspection.

ASD & ToM

Children with ASD may pass first-order tasks but fail order suggesting they do not have a secure understanding of people's minds. Provides insight on the impairments seen in ASD. E.g. social impairments. ASD have a deficit in understanding of minds is a major discovery.

Gonzales, Fabricius and Kupfer's in contrast to Simulation theory, 2017

Children's errors revealed that the effect of person could not be explained by difficulty in overcoming egocentric bias & thus was likely not due to failed simulations. Children who passed the self versions of the tasks were equally likely to err with either ego‐ or non-egocentric responses. The effect of person was likely due to the process of theorising about the causes of mental states in others. Introspection would allow children to experiment with their own states to discover what leads to seeing and what leads to knowing. (TTWellman, 2014),

ASD (autism spectrum disorder)

DSM-5. ASD can be associated with intellectual disability, difficulties in motor coordination & attention and physical health issues such as sleep & gastrointestinal disturbances. Some persons with ASD excel in visual skills, music, math & art. Autism appears to have its roots in very early brain development. However, the most obvious signs of autism and symptoms of autism tend to emerge between 2 and 3 years of age.

Deception

Deception involves planting false beliefs in another person's mind & only possible if you realise other people can have false beliefs. Young children have the ability to deceive Implies that they must understand another person's ToM Lewis et al. (1989) found that 3 year old children, who were asked not to look at an item when the instructor left the room, looked & reported that they didn't.

Leslie (1987) on pretend play

Defines the child's ability to use metarepresentations to involve himself/ herself in pretend play as an early marker of ToM. Children can pretend play without confusion: two types of representations. 1. Primary representation: banana is a banana 2.Secondary representation/ metarepresentations: banana is a telephone

Eye-direction detector

Detects presence of eyes & where eyes are directed

Onishi & Baillargeon (2005)

Do 15-Month-Old Infants Understand False Beliefs? 56 healthy-term infants, 27 female and 29 male Used a novel nonverbal task to examine 15-month-old infants' ability to predict an actor's behaviour on the basis of her true or false belief about a toy's hiding place. a violation-of-expectation paradigm (mindset). A watermelon in a green box while an actor watches. The actor's view is blocked as the watermelon slice moves to a yellow box. The actor reappears & reaches into one of the boxes. Infants looked significantly longer at the display when the actor reached into the yellow box than when the actor reached into the green box. The opposite pattern of looking was found for true belief. Positive results supporting the view that, from a young age, children appeal to mental states-goals, perceptions, & beliefs-to explain the behaviour of others. Similar to other researchers, we assume that children are born with an abstract computational system that guides their interpretation of others' behaviour.

Gonzales, Fabricius and Kupfer's limitation, 2017

Does not address the literature on children's ability to introspect false belief & focused only on children's understanding of others. Asking children about their own false beliefs requires reporting a past mental state, which is more difficult than reporting a present state. How children's implicit & explicit ToM are (dis)similar is an ongoing debate (e.g., Apperly & Butterfill, 2009;

Gonzales, Fabricius and Kupfer's aim, 2017.

Examine the development of children's understanding of their own & others' mental states of seeing & knowing, in regard to simulation theory, theory theory, & hybrid theories.

Blooma and German's method (2000)

Examined 19 articles, concerning the false belief task to be one of the classic methods in the study of development and criticising it. The point of this paper is that the false belief task should be considered in its proper context.

It depends on the measure

False belief: verbal tests: 4+ years less verbal, but still action measure tests: 3 years implicit, looking measure tests: 15 months Knowledge/ignorance: guesser vs. knower: 4 years tailor communication: 2 years knowledge by acquaintance: 12 months Desire 18 months

False-belief criticisms

Family size, siblings & ability- none have a major effect Criticism is that the tasks focus on misrepresentations (Mitchell, 1994) False Belief task is not a comprehensive assessment of ToM

Blooma and German's abandon reason 1 (2000)

First, passing the false belief task requires abilities other than theory of mind. - competence is filtered through inefficient processing capacities (German & Leslie, 2000). - Gopnik & others- to argue that they merely show that developmental change occurs somewhat earlier than expected

Charman et al. follow-up (2000)

Follow up of longitudinally at 44 months & theory of mind measures was conducted, including visual perspective-taking task, "Seeing-leads-to-knowing" task and situation and desire-based emotion task.

Ruffman et. al 1998

Found that children with older siblings had a better understanding of false beliefs.

Meins et al. 2002

Found that mothers who referred to mental states when interacting with their child at 6 months, at aged 4 they performed better at false belief tasks.

Advanced ToM Tasks

Frith and Happé'sé's animated shape Explore ToM with no human Medial Prefrontal Cortex, Superior Temporal Sulcus at the temporo-parietal junction, temporal poles Extratiate Cortex reduced connectivity to STS at the TPJ in ASD

Linking senences

Further supports Evidence suggests theory Further analysis

Charman et al. results (2000)

Gaze switches between mother & doll In terms of full correlations, functional play & pretend play were correlated although this just missed significance. Blocking & teasing scores were significantly correlated with imitation scores. Joint attention behaviours associated with ToM at 44months

Introspection & Gonzales 2018

Gonzales (2018) found that children could assess the ability to use seeing & knowing to attribute to themselves & others. 236 participants Age 2: can attribute seeing to themselves Age 3: can attribute knowing to themselves 7 month delay in attributing both seeing & knowing to attribute to others

False Representation

Gopnik and Astington (1988) using Smarties test First Person - "When you first saw the box, before we opened it, what did you think was inside?"Children Mis-represent their own incorrect belief into a belief that they perceived the answer correctly

Developmental pathways

How children develop an explicit understanding of mental states. 1. Introspection 2. Construction of mental state concepts

Charman et al. findings mean (2000)

Imitation ability at 20 months was longitudinally associated with expressive, but not receptive, language ability at 44 months. It is argued that joint attention, play, & imitation, & language & theory of mind, might form part of a shared social-communicative representational system in infancy that becomes increasingly specialised & differentiated as development progresses.

Gonzales, Fabricius and Kupfer, 2017.

Introspection Plays an Early Role in Children's Explicit Theory of Mind Development

Theory-theory/conceptual change approach

Learn set of laws: Three phases: Age 2: desire psychology- people's desires influence their behaviour Age 3 reality/belief-desire psychology- takes into account a person's desires & their beliefs about the world. Age 4: belief/reality psychology- crucial realisation that beliefs are interpretations & may be inaccurate. Hypothesis testing

Mental States (Premack & Woodruf 1978)

Mainly observing an organisms purpose/intention: assessing non-verbal communication Believes (they are late) Thinks (they are going to get the train) Knows (information) Likes (someone) Guesses (something is wrong) Doubts Promises Trusts

Wimmer and Perner (1983)

Mental model/representations: unexpected transfer task 3-9 year olds Maxi puts his chocolate in the kitchen cupboard and leaves the room to play. When he is away (and cannot see) his mother moves the chocolate from the cupboard to the fridge. Where will he look for his chocolate, in the fridge or the cupboard?

Pretend and representational play

Need to be able to draw an understanding of what other are doing & implement pretence Infants can understand the use of pretence as a form of play & means to influence the behaviour of another.

Language

Parental emotion language Parental use of the word want Child language development Heavy language component to false belief tasks

False beliefs

Premack & Woodruf found that Chimpanzees fail deception tasks Unable to understand a false belief in another agent False Belief becomes a test of ToM

Gonzales, Fabricius and Kupfer's in support of the Simulation theory, 2017

Reasons for seeing before knowing: - Distinctive phenomenological features of seeing make it intrinsically more important than knowing. - Experience (parents' child‐directed speech) -Greater covariation between "see" & seeing

Sally- Anne Task (false belief)

Reduced complexity of the Maxi story SALLY ANNE TEST. sally puts ball in a basket and leaves the room. Anne puts it in her box, then sally comes back. children are asked, where do you think sally will look for her ball?

Wellman et al (2001)

Reviewed 180 studies involving false belief- Few 2/3 year olds understand false belief tasks but 4 year olds passed. Children have an understanding of false belief at aged 4, & appreciate other people's behaviour can be based on incorrect assumptions. Realising others have different representations of the world.

Blooma and German's abandon reason 2 (2000)

Second, theory of mind need not entail the ability to reason about false beliefs. - Plenty of signs that even before their second birthday, children have some appreciation of the workings of other minds.

Simulation Theory Gordon (1986) & Harris (1992).

Simulation theory No theory required Experience of a wide enough range of situational possibilities for a child to be able to imagine what he/she would do in another person's position. Importance of pretend play

Perner, Leekam & Wimmer (1987)

Smarties Test (Deceptive Box Task) 1. Participants are asked what they think is in the box, they expect sweets. 2. Lid is taken off & the children are shown that the box contains pencils. 3. Lid is replaced & children are asked what one of their friends will think is in the box when they show them the box? Aged 4- sweets (correct) Aged 3- pencils (incorrect) Age 3 cannot understand false belief & still persist that there are sweets in the box (lack insight)

First order ToM

Smarties/Sally-Anne task & transfer tasks focus on first order - what you think someone else will think By age 3.7 children are understanding 1st order ToM, interpret complex social situations that involve ToM. "I think she thinks his potato sculpture is bad" Ruffman & Olson (1989) reported that the order of presence and absence questions did not affect children's performance,

Performance on non-verbal tasks

Southgate et al. (2007) performance in 2-year-olds.

Wellman (1990)

Suggested that children's understanding of the mind progresses through several theory changes between the ages 2-4 Children's understanding of mind is based on the development of their representations.

ToM mechanism

System for inferring mental states

Charman et al. 2000

Testing joint attention, imitation, & play as infancy precursors to language and theory of mind.

Why a "Theory" of Mind?

The ability to infer metal states to oneself & others Presumes information of mental states which cannot be directly observable (embarrassed/shy) Provides a bench mark for making predictions, specifically of behaviour in other organisms "Fall from Grace".

Gonzales, Fabricius and Kupfer's theories, 2017

The current findings- do not support current theories of ToM development. TT predicts only a main effect of mental state; Classical ST & versions of embodied ST that hold that mirror mechanisms are learned predict only a main effect of person; Versions of embodied ST that hold that mirror mechanisms are innate predict neither effect; & Hybrid theories predict an interaction between mental state and person.

Modularity Theory Baron-Cohen (1995), Leslie (1987) & Fodor (1983)

Theory of Mind is innate module Needs parameter (limit, framework) settings Linked to social development Test children's dual symbolism & reality vs belief- banana/gun

Criticisms on false belief tasks

Though control questions ensure that 3-year-old children can cope with some of these basic task demands (e.g. see Perner, Leekham & Wimmer, 1987), the task is too hard for 1- and 2-year-olds, as they lack sufficient attentional and linguistic resources to cope.

Blooma and German's aim (2000)

To investigate false belief tasks and propose two reasons to abandon this practice.

Baron-Cohen et al. aim (1985)

To use a new model of meta-representational development to predict a cognitive deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism.

Brain Regions

ToM Regions - bilateral temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate, & medial prefrontal cortex (Jacoby et al. 2016) A. False belief B. Pain Stories C. Non-verbal Movie condition Supports the concept there separate neural networks for ToM assessment & specifically False Beliefs triggers just one

Joint attention

Tomasello (1995) proposed that the emergence of joint attention skills in the second year of life is evidence for the infant's emerging understanding of others as intentional agents & that this social cognitive ability is the bedrock of a later theory of mind ability. (Leslie, 1987, Leslie, 1994) proposed that pretend play is an early manifestation of the child's capacity for meta-representation, directly linking the cognitive capacities involved in pretending (the ability to represent and manipulate one's own attitudes to information) to the later development of a theory of mind.

Southgate et al. method (2007)

Twenty aged 2 infants: 10 each false belief condition. Each infant was presented with two familiarisation trials & one test trial. An actor was seated behind a panel containing two windows, & in front of each window was an opaque box. At the beginning of each trial, a puppet appeared from the bottom of the screen and placed a brightly coloured ball in one of the boxes

Blooma and German (2000)

Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of theory of mind

Repacholi & Gopnik (1997)

Understanding of others' desires 14- & 18-month-olds E presents two bowls of food: one of crackers (appealing food), one of broccoli (unappealing food) Child tastes each food & tells E which he prefers. Then E tastes each food & produces either a happy emotional expression ("Mmm!") or a disgusted expression ("Eww!"), depending on the experimental condition. E holds her hand out in between the two bowls & asks the child "Can you give me some?" (without looking at or indicating either bowl). 18-month-olds gave the food E was happy about, even if it was not the one they themselves preferred. 14-month-olds gave the food they preferred.

Caution- Oakley et al. (2016)

Used participants with ASD Alexithymia Used MASC in conjunction with RMET Suggest that increased difficulty in RMET is due to the task being more of a test of emotion recognition than ToM

Southgate et al. test trials

Was whether infants attribution of false belief Or on the basis of simpler rules, such as to look at the first or the last place the ball was.

Executive Function (EF)

Working memory Inhibition Control Carlson et al. (2013) EF enables the expression of ToM EF supports the development of ToM through learning to self regulate, you are more able to infer the feelings and motivations of others

Domain General

Young children are developing their social cognition Could be using "general" aspects of their brain domains Move into a domain specific use - when notably they become effective interpreters of mental states

Tomasello & Haberl (2003)

Young children have understanding of knowledge of others 12- & 18-month-olds E1 & the child play with two toys successively. While E2 & the child play with a third toy, E1 is out of the room(experimental condition) E1 stands near the door & watches(control condition). E1 returns & shows excitement toward the group of 3 toys. E tells the child "Give it to me."

O'Neill (1996)

Young children have understanding of knowledge of others 2-year-olds Children watched as a toy was hidden in one of two out-of-reach containers. Sometimes their parent witnessed the hiding too; sometimes not. Children's requests were more informative when parents were ignorant than knowledgable (more gestures, identifying verbalisations). But: if the parent's eyes are covered at an irrelevant point in the hiding process (before but not during the hiding), young 2-year-olds treat the parent as ignorant (Dunham, Dunham, & O'Keefe, 2000).