Week 5 - development of theory of mind

Week 5

Theory of mind

The ability to make inferences about mental states

Synonyms for theory of mind

Mentalizing, perspective-taking, empathy

How it relates to social cognition

Helps developing social skills to manage communications and relationships, allows us to make sense of social world, predict/explain people’s actions/behaviour by thinking about internal states

Repacholi & Gopnick (1997)

Broccoli/crackers study.

Researcher says they don’t like crackers but does like broccoli

Asks participants “can you give me some?”

18-month-olds (but not 14-month-olds) give broccoli.

Shows 18-month-olds understand that desires are subjective.

When theory of mind develops

Proposed to start developing at 15/18 months, develops gradually

Theory of mind in adults

Understanding that others have different mental state to oneself.

Requires awareness of:

• I (but also other people) can represent surrounding world

• Content of this representation might differ from reality

Shifts from situation-based to representation-based understanding of behaviour.

Based on belief-desire reasoning.

Belief-desire reasoning

The process by which one explains and predicts another's behaviour on the basis of one's understanding of the other's desires and beliefs

Measuring theory of mind in children

False-belief task - scenario where someone’s knowledge about the world is different from the actual state of the world.

• These tasks typically involve situations where an object is moved or changed location unbeknownst to a character in the scenario, and the child is asked to predict what the character will believe or do. 

True-belief task - assess ability to understand that someone else's belief can be true about the world, even if it differs from their own knowledge/beliefs.

Unexpected transfer task - Wimmer & Perner (1983)

Children shown scenes:

1. Scene 1 - Maxi puts chocolate in cupboard

2. Scene 2 - Mum moves it to fridge

Children asked: “where will Maxi look for his chocolate?”, asking children to compare memory with reality.

> 5-year-olds said in the cupboard

< 5-year-olds said in the fridge

Shows understanding that others can hold false beliefs develops around age 5.

Sally-Anne task - Baron-Cohen et al. (1985)

Sally has a basket; Anne has a box.

• Sally puts her marble in her basket. Then, Sally goes out for a walk.

• Anne takes the marble out of the basket and puts it into the box.

Sally comes back and wants to play with her marble. Where will she look for it?

• <4 y (and autistic children of older ages) answered “In the box!”

Descriptive box task - Perner et al. (1987)

• “What do you think there is inside this tube?” “Smarties!”

• “Let’s see what’s inside.. Pencils!”

• “What would your friend say there is inside, if they have not seen inside the Smarties tube?” [<4 y: pencils!, 4+ y: smarties]

Gopnik & Astington (1988)

• “When you first saw this tube, before we opened it, what did you think was inside?”

• 3/4-year-olds: difficulty acknowledging false belief in others and own prior false belief once they know what is inside

What ages are successful in false-belief tasks?

4-year-olds+ are successful as ToM develops at this age

Theory of mind in 3-years and younger

• Not showing ToM abilities doesn’t mean the child lacks it

• Understanding (competence) is different from how well they show it (performance)

• Language and question wording matter in ToM tasks

• Simplifying tasks can help younger children do better, but still not as well as 4-year-olds

Implicit knowledge in false-belief tasks

Standard tests test explicit understanding (verbal answers about others’ beliefs).

But younger children may show implicit understanding (non-verbal signs), e.g. through brows furrowing, lip biting.

Recording eye-gaze behaviour may hint at child’s flow of thinking without requiring verbal response.

Moll et al. (2016)

Signs of tension/suspense in processing false beliefs vs. true beliefs sometimes visible in 3-year-olds

Unexpected transfer task and implicit/explicit understanding

Unexpected transfer tasks show a gap between implicit and explicit understanding of the task.

Children develop an implicit/unconscious understanding of false beliefs at an earlier age than explicit/conscious understanding of false beliefs.

It is better to use non-verbal task with infants < 3 years to test implicit understanding of false-belief tasks (e.g., violation of expectancy).

Violation of expectancy

Infants familiarise themselves with an event, then test behaviour is presented that is consistent or inconsistent with the event.

Infant looks longer at the inconsistent event - taken as evidence they are surprised.

Indicates some knowledge about what should happen.

Onishi & Baillargeon (2005)

Studied 15-month-olds using violation of expectancy and found they seemed to realise that 'others act on the basis of their beliefs and that these beliefs are representations that may or may not mirror reality.'

Stage change or gradual improvement?

Probability of responding correctly to false-belief tasks increases with age.

Children start responding correctly to false-belief tasks around 3 ½ years.

Situations where there is a deceptive motive (e.g., the chocolate is moved to trick the protagonist) improve performance at all ages.

Performance was found to improve, at all ages, when the child actively participates to the task (e.g., transforming the target object and not passively watching), if the object is present and the protagonist's belief is clearly stated or pictured.

Factors likely to affect theory of mind development

• Biological maturation of brain systems involved in ToM

• Executive functioning

• Language and comprehension

• Memory

• Attention & Joint attention

• Social and cultural experience, and interactions with other people

• Neuro-divergence

Charman (2000)

Joint attention skills in 20-months-old predicted their theory-of-mind performance at 3 years 8 months.

Development of brain systems involved in executive functions (mainly frontal lobes) is still ongoing during childhood and adolescence (pre-frontal cortex is one of the last to brain regions to mature).

Executive functions and false belief tasks

• Inhibitory control (improvements between age 3 and 6) → Stopping a prepotent response (pointing towards an object before thinking if that is the correct object to point)

• Task switching → moving from a real-world situation to think about an abstract representation

• Working memory → holding different and conflicting representations in mind and manipulating this information to come to the correct answer

Social conversations and interactions

• Social referencing: 12-months-old monitor parental emotional reactions to ambiguous situations and use this information to regulate own behaviour (Sorce et al. 1985, visual cliff task)

• Conversations: talking about mental states and reflecting on others’ mental states help children to acquire the appropriate vocabulary to discuss and reflect on mental states (Harris, 1999)

• Older siblings and parents who talk about mental states have positive effects on ToM development (Perner, Ruffman, & Leekham, 1994; Ruffman, Perner, Naito, Parkin, & Clements,1998)

• Low socio-economic status: less opportunities to experience conversation in the home environment

• No evidence for cross-cultural difference (Callaghan et al. 2005)

Mind-mindedness

Tendency to comment appropriately on infants’ mental states, desires, knowledge

Meins et al. (2002)

57 6-month infant and mothers observed in free-play context.

Mothers’ use of mental state language commenting appropriately or inappropriately on infants’ mental states measured.

Better performance on ToM tasks at 4-years predicted by increased mental mind-mindedness at 6-months.

Caputi et al. (2011)

• Longitudinal study tracking 84 Italian children from age 5-7 to explore if ToM can predict changes in behavioural, cognitive, and socio-emotional variables.

• Time 1 & 2: ToM tasks, verbal ability test.

• Time 3: ToM Test, Emotion Comprehension Test, Grammar Test.

• Teacher-rated pro-social behaviours at all times, Prosocial With Peers subscale (time 2 & 3), peer rejection and popularity (time 2 & 3).

Baron-Cohen (1985)

Sally-Ann task - 80% of autistic children did not take into account Sally's false belief, even those with mental age above 4 years of age (while 5-year-old neurotypicals succeeded at this task).

A deficit in ToM is not due to learning difficulties/general developmental delay (children with Down's syndrome did not fail).

Theory: a majority of autistic children have a deficit in ToM.

Smarties task

Autistic children struggle in this task, even if they have a verbal mental age above 4 years.

They have problems with acknowledging beliefs (including their own).

ToM difficulties are reported in naturalistic settings in autistic people.

What are the developmental changes in children's description and perception of others?

• Younger children are less likely to recognise inconsistencies and exceptions in others.

• From 7-8 years children focus on inner qualities.

• Up to 6-8 years children focus on external features.

• Children are more likely to use organising relationships to describe others in adolescence.

What is task switching in the context of theory of mind

Moving from a real world observation to think about an abstract representation

In the Sally-Anne task, where will a 5 year old child say Sally will look for the marble?

In the basket

In the Sally-Anne task, where will a 3 year old child say Sally will look for the marble? 

In the box

When does ToM begin to develop

15-18 months

Based on Caputi et al. (2011), what is true about the relationship between children’s early Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities and their later peer relationships?

Higher ToM performance in preschool predicted more teacher‑rated prosocial behaviours and greater peer acceptance in early school years.

How do young children describe others

Young children (under age 7) generally use behavioural descriptors when describing other people- person perception is behavioural

Executive functions are important for ToM because they help children:

Inhibit prepotent (automatic) responses

When using person perception language to describe other people, in which order do these concepts manifest in language?

Behavioural comparisons, psychological constructs, organising relationships