PSYC20008 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Theory-Theory, Joint Attention, Social Cognition
14 Jun 2018
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Lecture 5 - Tuesday 14 March 2017
PSYC20006 - DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE 5
THEORY OF MIND
THEORY OF MIND
•Theory of Mind (ToM) is the attribution of mental states to other people.
•Eg. Tony Abbott thinks that the Queen is a lovely person.
•We are making an attribute about how Tony Abbot thinks.
•A mental state is an idea, a piece of knowledge, a thought, an emotion, a want, a need of a
person.
•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, empathy,
imitation.
•ToM is dependent on the maturation of several brain systems.
•ToM is shaped by parenting, social relations, training and education (Korkmaz, 2011).
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
•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).
•Why is it a theory?
•Why is ToM important?
•Understanding the intentions of others is the basis of nearly all social interactions among people
beyond preschool age.
•Knowing another person’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
HOW DOES IT DEVELOP?
→ Premack and Woodruff (1978)
•Introduced the concept of ToM
•They posed the question as to whether the chimpanzee has a ToM – could chimps understand
human goals?
•Big debate sparked
•What does “imputing mental states to oneself and others” actually mean?
•What evidence is necessary and sufficient to make such an inference?
•Early infant interest in behaviour of others
•Preference for looking at faces rather than objects
•Imitation of facial movements
•Intention (~ 8 months)
•The desire to act in a certain way
•Gestures (~9 months +)
•Often occur before verbal language, and can be effective in communication between people
•Pointing is an especially important gesture
Lecture 5 - Tuesday 14 March 2017
PSYC20006 - DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
•Joint attention (starts ~3 months, refined at 9-18 months)
•Where two+ people focus intentionally on the same point
•Research suggests autistic children don’t have very good joint attention, or it at least develops
a little later.
•Understanding the desires of others (~12 months+)
•Phillips, Wellman and Spelke (2002) paper
•8 month and 12 month olds; two kittens example
•Theory of Mind (13-15 months; 18-24 months; 3-5 years)
•ToM starts to operate in the human from about 13 months of age, when language learning
takes place
•At 18-24 months there is a convergence of several important developmental milestones;
•Full understanding joint attention
•Deliberate imitation
•Ability to track a speaker’s intention during learning
•Decoding words
•At 18 months, children show a sensitivity to others’ intentions and from there a ToM develops
PRETEND PLAY AND ToM
•Pretend (make-believe) play facilitates ToM development
•Joint proposals between children about a situation
•Role assignment
•Meta-communication about a scenario
•Starts around 18 months of age and declines after 6 years
METHODS TO TEST ToM
•Over 30 tasks have been used to measure ToM in children.
•Many consist of a brief story followed by questions that require ToM to be correctly answered.
•Task examples;
•False Belief task
•Recognition of mental states
•Answering a question both truthfully and falsely
•Stories (like the Strange Stories)
•Images, comic strips, videos
•Deception
•Higher levels of social cognition (humour, sarcasm, metaphor)
•Intentions and empathy
FALSE BELIEF TASK
•The False Belief task is the most commonly used ToM task type
•Sally and Anne task* is the most common False Belief task
•Sally puts toy in basket and Anne moves it to box when Sally leaves. Where will she look for
the ball when she returns?
•3 yr olds: box
•Egocentric response; the child knows the ball is in the box so the child thinks Sally will
know this too.
•4 yr olds: mix of both
•5 yr olds: basket
•Able to see that she does not know what is in the box. The child realises that beliefs are
merely mental representations of reality that may be wrong and someone else may not
share.
•Belief determines behaviour (even if the belief is wrong)
Document Summary
Theory of mind: theory of mind (tom) is the attribution of mental states to other people, eg. Pretend play and tom: pretend (make-believe) play facilitates tom development, joint proposals between children about a situation, role assignment, meta-communication about a scenario, starts around 18 months of age and declines after 6 years. False belief task: the false belief task is the most commonly used tom task type, sally and anne task* is the most common false belief task, sally puts toy in basket and anne moves it to box when sally leaves. The child realises that beliefs are merely mental representations of reality that may be wrong and someone else may not share: belief determines behaviour (even if the belief is wrong) Strange story task: a burglar who has just robbed a shop is making his getaway. As he is running, a policeman on his beat sees the burglar drop his glove.
