Theory of Mind - CD

Understanding a scenario and providing answers known as folk psychology or theory of mind.
1. PREMACK and WOODRUFF - 1978 - people have theory of mind if they can impute mental states to himself and others, can also make predictions about the behaviour of others
  1. being able to predict another's behaviour has important consequences for everyday life. it is an important cognitive skill to be able to predict and explain the behaviour of others.
GOALS
1. WOODWARD - 1998 - by 6 months old we understand that people have goals, by 18 months we can appreciate failed goals, at 18 months the child will copy the intended action and help complete the intended goal
2. BUTTELMANN ET AL - 2009 - at 12 months begin to recognise and help other people with their tasks and problems. they can therefore tell a child understands false-belief due to the children helping and interpreting the adult's perspective on the tasks. bias of language abilities is non-existing
BELIEFS AND DESIRES
1. between the ages of 12 and 24 months, the child develops important social skills that correspond to the DESIRE STAGE OF THEORY OF MIND (people have internal states or emotions that correspond to desire)
  1. by 18 months can appreciate that others have different desires, and gave what other people wanted compared to what they wanted at 14 months.
    1. at age 2 children begin developing a sense of the public and private self
      1. by three years children have a much more developed sense of social interaction and learn 10 -20 new words a week. by age three children learn the difference between beliefs and desires and that someone may habe a desire for something but have a conflicting belief
PERSPECTIVES
1. LEVEL ONE - you and I see different things. LEVEL TWO - you and I see the same thing in different ways
  1. by 18 months will fit their perspective to yours. perspective taking not simple and even some adults fail
  2. THREE MOUNTAINS TASK - four year old can't say what doll sees, but a seven year old can
  3. at 36-48 months child develops ' seeing leads to knowing' e.g. see toy put away, adult knows toy is in the box
FIRST ORDER TOM - attributing beliefs. SECOND ORDER - attributing beliefs about beliefs
1. second order allows jokes, lies, sarcasm, bullying, deception and appears around 6 to 8
2. second order - understand that people may want to evoke an emotion in another person so might want to make them feel good or bad
BARON-COHEN - 1995 - gaze following and proto-declarative pointing is evidence that the child is learning to coordinate its own mental state
COLE ET AL - 1992 - from an early age (2 years) children begin to show awareness of other people's feelings, e.g. toddlers will try to mop up a spilt drink. children demonstrated empathy
FALSE BELIEFS IN THEORY OF MIND
1. DENNET - 1978 - the only way to test ascribing mental states is to measure the understanding of false bellief
2. WIMMER AND PERNER - 1983 - maxi and the chocolate task - mum put chocolate in fridge etc. criticised for being too complex / long story.
3. BARON-COHEN ET AL. - 1985 - THE SALLY-ANNE TASK - asked three questions about beleif, reality and memory, which are critical skills Baron-Cohen calls 'mind reading'
  1. SIEGAL AND BEATTIE - 1991 - argue that three year old children fail on the sally anne task due to a mistake in understanding the question. they changed the wording from "where would sally look for her marble?" to "where will sally look FIRST", correct results rose from 35% to 70%.
4. PERNER ET AL - 1987 - SMARTIES TASK - aksed what's in the tube, looks like smarties, but are actually pencils, four year olds will answer smarties about what others will think is there. three year olds will say pencils (no TOM)
5. LESLIE AND THAISS - 1992 - the tasks are hypothetical and therefore require the child to consider what an imaginary child might do. need the cognitve skills to mentally consider the event, which might develop AFTER the ability top know about beliefs in a real-life situation
6. WELLMAN ET AL - 2001 - meta-analysis on theory of false bellief. there is a clear development pattern of false belief across countries and age and task.older chilfren better, false-belief tasks illustrate the important parts of a person's early cognitive development
THEORY OF MIND AND LANGUAGE
1. LANGUAGE might be a seperate cognitve ability to theory of mind - so might not perform as they might not understand what is being asked of them
  1. MERISTO ET AL - 2007- tested children who either taught sign language from brith or introduced to it at school. deaf children who were introducted to it at birth had theory of mind skills similar to that of hearing children
  2. PESKIN AND ARDINO - 2003 - start keeping screts at around age four, those who can keep secrets are better at theory of mind
2. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTS relate very much to language. all measures of the false belief task are reliant on the child's language skills. they may not be able to vocalise their thoughts
3. CLEMENTS AND PERNER - 1994 - false belief might be present in younger children implicitly (unconsciously). tested where children looked in the sally-anne task to decide if they understood false belief and found looked at the right place but said wrong place. therefore incorrect answers to do with language not inability to do task.
  1. HOWEVER PERNER AND RUFFMAN - 2005 - said that looking for longer at something only showed that the infant notices sonething unusual.
THEORIES EXPLAINING THEORY OF MIND
1. "THEORY-THEORY" - a child cannot have a full understanding of the nature of false-beliefs until they can make a cognitive decision using meta-representation. e.g meta-rep of a banana as a telephone.
2. "SIMULATION THEORY" - we are biologically desighned to understand beliefs, desires and motivations in the mind of others, and we USE OUR OWN MIND AS A TEMPLATE. can then make predictions based on own mind
  1. MELTZOFF - 1995 - a 'like me' comparison
THEORY OF MIND AND AUTISM
1. AUTISM SPECTRUM CONDITIONS occur in 1% of the population, are heritable, result from atypical neurodevelopment. difficulties with social functioning, communication, and coping with change, IQ average or above.
  1. people with autism have difficulty in understanding the minds of others. can't recognise context of balloons, cake, presents etc but can locate ballons, what's on them, note detail etc. They show repetitive behaviours. People with autism fail to make the distinction between what is mental (mind) and what is physical, frequently make mistakes. children with autism find it difficult to distinguish between an appearance and reality of an object
    1. can't predict other's behaviour. 'seeing leads to knowing' is not present.

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Theory of Mind - CD

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	Created by becky.waine almost 11 years ago