PSYC20008 Lecture 5: PSYC20008 Lecture 5 + 6
10 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 5
- Theory of Mind (ToM): ability to make an attribution of the mental state of someone
else
- E.g. Tony Abbott thinks that the Queen is a lovely person (first-order ToM); making
an attribution about what Tony Abbott thinks
- A mental state is an idea, a piece of knowledge, a thought, an emotion, a desire, a
want, a need of a person; thinking about what that person is thinking
- ToM is a complex cognitive function that requires the integration of information from
many sources (memory, joint attention, complex perceptual recognition [face, gaze-
processing], language, tracking of intentions/goals/moral reasoning, emotion
processing-recognition [perceive emotion someone else is displaying], empathy
[consider what the situation is in that person’s point of view], imitation [thinking about
why someone else is acting the way they do and imitating their behaviour])
- ToM is dependent on the maturation of several brain systems (constitute a number
of different processes in the brain and probably a number of brain processes and
systems involved; ability to theorise the mental state of someone else is reliant on
those brain systems maturing)
- ToM is shaped by parenting, social relations, training and education (there are social
influences on someone’s ability to perceive the beliefs/wants/needs of someone else;
prove someone’s ability to mentalise about someone else through education,
parental shaping, training, spending time with other people [social relations] )
- If someone has struggles with ToM → help train them to improve ToM
- ToM is “the ability to put oneself into someone else’s shoes, to imagine their thoughts
and feelings” (Baron-Cohen, 2009)
- “When we mind-read or mentalise, we not only make sense of another person’s
behaviour, but we also imagine a whole set of mental states and we can predict what
they might do next” (Baron-Cohen, 2009)
- People with autism have difficulties with ToM in general; they find it very hard to
anticipate what someone else is going to do next → makes the world frightening; if
don’t understand why someone is acting as they do → can’t predict necessarily very
well the next step they’re going to make → can be quite scary
-
- Lucy says Let’s play football, I’ll set the ball up for you → every time she moves the
ball at the last minute and he falls on his back → Charlie Brown is not thinking very
well about Lucy’s mental state
- Why is ToM called a theory: can’t confirm the theory because can’t mindread, can’t
ask a person what they’re thinking (could ask Lucy why are you moving the ball
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
every time I try to kick it → can’t mindread Lucy and know → have to theorise, can’t
prove that theory)
- Why is ToM important:
- ⇒ need to interact with other people in a social setting, need to anticipate how people
are going to react to us
- ⇒ understanding the intentions of others is the basis of nearly all social interactions
among people beyond preschool age (understand the intentions of other people in
our environment, nearly the entire basis of social interaction is about understanding
the intentions of other people, and develops during and after preschool age)
- ⇒ knowing each other’s goals and/or inner states can be useful in order to: predict
the person’s future actions (co-operative, non-co-operative, threatening); adjust your
actions appropriately
-
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
-
- How did ToM develop: not long ago; started with understanding how chimps act
- Premack and Woodruff (1978) introduced the concept of ToM → did a study
- They posed the question as to whether the chimpanzee has a ToM – could chimps
understand human goals? (posed the question as to whether Sarah the chimp had
ToM, could the chimp understand the actions of the human)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Theory of mind (tom): ability to make an attribution of the mental state of someone else. Tony abbott thinks that the queen is a lovely person (first-order tom); making an attribution about what tony abbott thinks. A mental state is an idea, a piece of knowledge, a thought, an emotion, a desire, a want, a need of a person; thinking about what that person is thinking. Tom is a complex cognitive function that requires the integration of information from many sources (memory, joint attention, complex perceptual recognition [face, gaze- processing], language, tracking of intentions/goals/moral reasoning, emotion processing-recognition [perceive emotion someone else is displaying], empathy. [consider what the situation is in that person"s point of view], imitation [thinking about why someone else is acting the way they do and imitating their behaviour]) If someone has struggles with tom help train them to improve tom.
