When Injury Clouds Understanding of Others: Theory of Mind after Mild TBI in Preschool Children

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 483-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Bellerose ◽  
Annie Bernier ◽  
Cindy Beaudoin ◽  
Jocelyn Gravel ◽  
Miriam H. Beauchamp
Keyword(s):  
Preschool Children ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Externalizing Behavior ◽  
Brain Injuries ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Post Injury ◽  
Mild Tbi ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
The Social

AbstractThere is evidence to suggest that social skills, such as the ability to understand the perspective of others (theory of mind), may be affected by childhood traumatic brain injuries; however, studies to date have only considered moderate and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study aimed to assess theory of mind after early, mild TBI (mTBI). Fifty-one children who sustained mTBI between 18 and 60 months were evaluated 6 months post-injury on emotion and desires reasoning and false-belief understanding tasks. Their results were compared to that of 50 typically developing children. The two groups did not differ on baseline characteristics, except for pre- and post-injury externalizing behavior. The mTBI group obtained poorer scores relative to controls on both the emotion and desires task and the false-belief understanding task, even after controlling for pre-injury externalizing behavior. No correlations were found between TBI injury characteristics and theory of mind. This is the first evidence that mTBI in preschool children is associated with theory of mind difficulties. Reduced perspective taking abilities could be linked with the social impairments that have been shown to arise following TBI. (JINS, 2015,21, 483–493)

scholarly journals Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Can Attribute False Beliefs in a Spontaneous-Response Preferential-Looking Task

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Glenwright ◽  
Rose M. Scott ◽  
Elena Bilevicius ◽  
Megan Pronovost ◽  
Ana Hanlon-Dearman
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Children With Asd

An established body of literature indicates that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty understanding figurative language due to a deficit in theory of mind, or the ability to consider the beliefs of other people. Children with ASD tend to similarly fail traditional theory of mind tasks, which assess their ability to represent false beliefs. Our claim is, however, that these tasks involve cognitive processing demands that might mask false belief understanding because they require elicited responses. We examined whether children with ASD demonstrate false-belief understanding when tested with a spontaneous-response false belief task that measures children’s eye gaze durations. The two child participant groups were composed of 20 males with ASD (aged 3–9 years) and 20 typically developing males (aged 2–5 years) who were individually matched according to verbal mental age. Children with ASD and typically developing children listened to a change-of-location story accompanied by a book with matching and non-matching pictures. The final page showed the character searching for her object in a location that was either consistent or inconsistent with her belief. Both groups of children looked reliably longer at the belief-consistent picture, regardless of whether the character’s belief was true or false, though children with ASD were slower to do so. We suggest that a spontaneous-response assessment technique can potentially reveal figurative language comprehension in children with ASD in future research.

A New Look at Performance on Theory-of-Mind Tasks by Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder

2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 236-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine R. Silliman ◽  
Sylvia F. Diehl ◽  
Ruth Huntley Bahr ◽  
Theresa Hnath-Chisolm ◽  
Catherine Bouchard Zenko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Task Type ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
The Social ◽  
False Belief Tasks

Purpose: A hallmark of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is disruption in theory-of-mind development, including the understanding of false beliefs. Previous studies have typically assessed the development of first- and second-order false belief concepts in ASD, with tasks primarily emphasizing physical causality and logical inferencing. The present study investigated how preadolescents and adolescents with ASD performed on false belief tasks that included social inferencing of psychological states as well as logical inferencing of physical states. Method: Two categories of tasks were administered: four traditional logical inferencing tasks and four social inferencing tasks specifically developed for this study. In addition, a prompt hierarchy was included to ascertain if performance on both task types improved. Participants were 45 children and adolescents primarily selected from three urban school districts: 15 adolescents with a previous diagnosis of ASD (ASD group); 15 typically developing children matched for age, gender, and ethnicity (CA group); and 15 typically developing children matched for language age, gender, and ethnicity (LA group). Results: Three findings were pertinent. First, the CA group performed at higher levels than did the LA group and the ASD group on both task sets. Second, although the CA and the LA groups performed equally well on both the logical and the social inferencing tasks, the ASD group performed better on the social inferencing tasks. Finally, the prompt hierarchy significantly improved overall task performance for the ASD and LA groups. Clinical Implications: These findings indicate that task type, variations in vocabulary ability, and the provision of support influenced performance on the false belief tasks.

False belief understanding: Children catch it from classmates of different ages

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifang Wang ◽  
Yanjie Su
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Location Task ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
Larger Sample ◽  
Better Than

Two experiments were conducted to compare the false belief understanding of children who have no siblings, but have classmates of different ages in kindergarten. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds completed two unexpected location tasks. We found that 4-year-olds with classmates of different ages performed significantly better than those with classmates of the same age. This result was replicated in a larger sample in Experiment 2 in which the children were asked to complete an unexpected location task and an unexpected content task. The findings suggested that the presence of minds with varied ages stimulates the social cognitive understanding of young children, particularly for 4-year-olds. The findings of the present study give a particularly clear view of the effect of classmates of different ages on young children's theory of mind development, extending findings in other research on the advantage of having siblings.

Do children understand desires before they understand beliefs? A comparison of 3-year-olds’ grasp of incompatible desires, competitive games and false beliefs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Proft ◽  
Cornelia Hoss ◽  
Katharina Manfredini Paredes ◽  
hannes rakoczy
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
False Belief ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Active Choice ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
Competitive Games ◽  
Cognitive Attitudes

A long-standing dispute in theory of mind research concerns the development of understanding different kinds of propositional attitudes. The asymmetry view suggests that children understand conative attitudes (e.g., desires) before they understand cognitive attitudes (e.g., beliefs). The symmetry view suggests that notions of cognitive and conative attitudes develop simultaneously. Relevant studies to date have produced inconsistent results, yet with different methods and dependent measures. To test between the two accounts more systematically, we thus combined different forms of desire tasks (incompatible desires and competition) with different forms of measurement (verbal ascription and active choice) in a single design. Additionally, children’s performance in the desire tasks was compared to their false-belief understanding. Results revealed that 3-year-olds were better at ascribing desires than at ascribing beliefs for both desire tasks whereas they had difficulties actively choosing the more desired option in the competition task. The present findings thus favor the asymmetry theory.

scholarly journals Theory of Mind Abilities and Social Competence in Preschool Children

2019 ◽  
Vol 09 (01) ◽  
pp. 09-11
Author(s):  
Shrunga Manchanapura Shivalingaiah ◽  
Fathimath Ramseena ◽  
Nafeesath Shareen
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Social Life ◽  
True Belief ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Clinical Population ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Objective Theory ◽  
Mixed Responses

Abstract Background and Objective Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability that can be attributed to mental status beliefs, intents, emotions, proficiency, etc., to oneself and to others, and the understanding that others also have intentions, conceptions, desires, and perspectives that are different from one’s own. Daily social life depends on the ability to evaluate the behavior of other people on the basis of their mental state such as their beliefs, intentions, compassions, and goals. This study was conducted to explore the ToM abilities in preschoolers. Methods A total of 36 preschoolers participated in the study. Two stories were narrated to the children, the classic Sally-Anne Task and the Smarty’s Task. In both the tasks, the responses of the children were scored as either true belief or false belief. Results The results of the present study revealed mixed responses among the preschoolers. It was found that 3- to 4-year-old children had more false beliefs for both the tasks when compared with 4- to 5-year-old. Conclusion This study highlights the importance of ToM abilities in typically growing children and other clinical population. It can be concluded that the ToM abilities were improved in typically developing children. Future studies are required to explore the higher levels of embedding of ToM, and also to incorporate it in the clinical population.

scholarly journals A Longitudinal Study of the Relations Between Theory of Mind, Executive Function, and Lying in Children

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Changzhi Zhao ◽  
Siyuan Shang ◽  
Alison M. Compton ◽  
Genyue Fu ◽  
Liyang Sai
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Executive Function ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Emotion Understanding ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Chinese Children ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Knowledge Access

This study used longitudinal cross-lagged modeling to examine the contribution of theory of mind (ToM), executive function (EF) to children’s lying development and of children’s lying to ToM and EF development. Ninety-seven Chinese children (initial Mage = 46 months, 47 boys) were tested three times approximately 4 months apart. Results showed that the diverse desire understanding and knowledge access understanding components of ToM, as well as the inhibitory control component of EF predicted the development of children’s lying, while the diverse belief understanding and false belief understanding components of ToM, and the working memory component of EF did not predict development of children’s lying. Meanwhile, children’s lying predicted development of children’s belief-emotion understanding components of ToM, but not any other ToM components, or EF components. These findings provide longitudinal evidence for the relation between ToM, EF, and children’s lying during the preschool years.

scholarly journals Importance of language for children’s theory of mind: Comparison of verbal and nonverbal theory of mind tasks

Psihologija ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 23-23
Author(s):  
Sanja Simlesa ◽  
Kaja Hacin ◽  
Maja Cepanec ◽  
Jasmina Ivsac-Pavlisa
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Hierarchical Regression ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verbal Tasks

The ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others, known as the theory of mind (ToM), has been widely researched over the past 40 years, along with its relation to language comprehension. However, a majority of the research on the relation between ToM and language used only verbal tasks assessing false belief understanding as a measure of ToM. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze the relation between language and ToM, using a larger battery of ToM measures, with different language demands. A total of 203 typically developing children between 46 and 68 months of age, with average nonverbal cognitive skills, were assessed using language comprehension and ToM tasks. The language aspect was assessed using the Reynell Developmental Language Scales (Language Comprehension scale A). To assess ToM, verbal and non-verbal tasks were taken from the ToM subtest of the NEPSY-II. Results indicated a significant correlation between language comprehension and verbal and non-verbal ToM measures. Hierarchical regression showed that language comprehension was a significant predictor for children's performance on both verbal and non-verbal ToM tasks. Specifically, language comprehension affected ToM, regardless of the language demands of the ToM tasks. However, language comprehension was a stronger predictor for verbal than non-verbal ToM tasks. The results of this study contribute to the view that the relation between language and ToM is fundamental and exceeds the features of specific tasks.

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