Understanding minds and evidence for belief: A study of Mofu children in Cameroon

2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 445-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penelope G. Vinden
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
True Belief ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Better Than

This study explores young children’s understanding of mind and their ability to give evidence for belief. Mofu children of Cameroon were chosen as participants as they provide a unique opportunity to compare the development of an understanding of minds and evidence in schooled and nonschooled populations. A series of standard theory-of-mind tasks were given to 154 children, as well as a novel evidence task. Results suggest that children who have attended school develop an understanding of minds earlier than nonattenders. School attenders did not show superior understanding of evidence for false belief. They did perform better than the nonschooled sample, however, on a question concerning evidence for a subsequent true belief, although performance on this question for both groups was poor.

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.

Theory of Mind

2019 ◽  
pp. 523-536
Author(s):  
Paula Rubio-Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Infants And Children ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Experimental Pragmatics ◽  
False Belief Tasks ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Belief Reasoning

Current accounts of Theory of Mind development have tried to explain the results of false-belief tasks with infants and children, but failed to account for the evidence of early belief reasoning reported in the experimental pragmatics literature. This chapter reviews a number of studies on the acquisition of the mental state verb know; toddlers’ understanding of factivity (or the difference between knowing and thinking); early referential communication and toddlers’ reliance on others’ engagement as a proxy for their knowledge, and the emergence of preschoolers’ understanding of the seeing-knowing relation. The results of these studies reveal a more nuanced picture than those of false-belief tasks, with some Theory of Mind abilities emerging earlier in conversation than in laboratory tasks, while children’s epistemic theories continue to develop beyond their passing of standard Theory of Mind tasks.

Temporo-parietal Junction Activity in Theory-of-Mind Tasks: Falseness, Beliefs, or Attention

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1179-1192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Aichhorn ◽  
Josef Perner ◽  
Benjamin Weiss ◽  
Martin Kronbichler ◽  
Wolfgang Staffen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Test Question ◽  
Teleological Reasoning ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Right

By combining the false belief (FB) and photo (PH) vignettes to identify theory-of-mind areas with the false sign (FS) vignettes, we re-establish the functional asymmetry between the left and right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). The right TPJ (TPJ-R) is specially sensitive to processing belief information, whereas the left TPJ (TPJ-L) is equally responsible for FBs as well as FSs. Measuring BOLD at two time points in each vignette, at the time the FB-inducing information (or lack of information) is presented and at the time the test question is processed, made clear that the FB is processed spontaneously as soon as the relevant information is presented and not on demand for answering the question in contrast to extant behavioral data. Finally, a fourth, true belief vignette (TB) required teleological reasoning, that is, prediction of a rational action without any doubts being raised about the adequacy of the actor's information about reality. Activation by this vignette supported claims that the TPJ-R is activated by TBs as well as FBs.

scholarly journals Appearances Are Deceiving: Observing the World as It Looks and How It Really Is—Theory of Mind Performances Investigated in 3-, 4-, and 5-Year-Old Children

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Bigozzi ◽  
Alessandra Di Cosimo ◽  
Giulia Vettori
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Developmental Trend ◽  
Comprehension Task ◽  
The World ◽  
Is Theory ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Better Than

Appearance-reality (AR) distinction understanding in preschoolers is worth of further consideration. This also goes for its relationship with false-belief (FB) understanding. This study helped fill these gaps by assessing 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children’s performances on an appearance-reality distinction task and by investigating relationships with unexpected location, deceptive content, and deception comprehension task performances. 91 preschoolers participated in this study divided into 3 groups: (1) 37 children, M-age 3.4 years; (2) 23 children, M-age 4.5 years; (3) 31 children, M-age 5.4 years. A developmental trend was found where appearance-reality distinction understanding was significantly influenced by age. If wrong answers were particularly high by 3-year-old children, they greatly decreased by 4- and 5-year-old children. 3-year-old children also tended to fail in FB tasks; instead 4- and 5-year-old children performed AR tasks better than FB tasks. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

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.

scholarly journals Why Do Children Who Solve False Belief Tasks Begin to Find True Belief Control Tasks Difficult? A Test of Pragmatic Performance Factors in Theory of Mind Tasks

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia P. Schidelko ◽  
Michael Huemer ◽  
Lara M. Schröder ◽  
Anna S. Lueb ◽  
Josef Perner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
True Belief ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Test Question ◽  
Performance Factors ◽  
Crucial Difference ◽  
Pragmatic Account ◽  
Litmus Test ◽  
Performance Pattern ◽  
Pragmatic Performance

The litmus test for the development of a metarepresentational Theory of Mind is the false belief (FB) task in which children have to represent how another agent misrepresents the world. Children typically start mastering this task around age four. Recently, however, a puzzling finding has emerged: Once children master the FB task, they begin to fail true belief (TB) control tasks. Pragmatic accounts assume that the TB task is pragmatically confusing because it poses a trivial academic test question about a rational agent’s perspective; and we do not normally engage in such discourse about subjective mental perspectives unless there is at least the possibility of error or deviance. The lack of such an obvious possibility in the TB task implicates that there might be some hidden perspective difference and thus makes the task confusing. In the present study, we test the pragmatic account by administering to 3- to 6-year-olds (N = 88) TB and FB tasks and structurally analogous true and false sign (TS/FS) tasks. The belief and sign tasks are matched in terms of representational and metarepresentational complexity; the crucial difference is that TS tasks do not implicate an alternative non-mental perspective and should thus be less pragmatically confusing than TB tasks. The results show parallel and correlated development in FB and FS tasks, replicate the puzzling performance pattern in TB tasks, but show no trace of this in TS tasks. Taken together, these results speak in favor of the pragmatic performance account.

scholarly journals Designing good deception: Recursive theory of mind in lying and lie detection

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren A. Oey ◽  
Adena Schachner ◽  
Edward Vul
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Stochastic Game ◽  
Lie Detection ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
Formal Framework ◽  
Recursive Theory ◽  
Better Than

The human ability to deceive others and detect deception has long been tied to theory of mind. We make a stronger argument: in order to be adept liars – to balance gain (i.e. maximizing their own reward) and plausibility (i.e. maintaining a realistic lie) – humans calibrate their lies under the assumption that their partner is a rational, utility-maximizing agent. We develop an adversarial recursive Bayesian model that aims to formalize the behaviors of liars and lie detectors. We compare this model to (1) a model that does not perform theory of mind computations and (2) a model that has perfect knowledge of the opponent’s behavior. To test these models, we introduce a novel dyadic, stochastic game, allowing for quantitative measures of lies and lie detection. In a second experiment, we vary the ground truth probability. We find that our rational models qualitatively predict human lying and lie detecting behavior better than the non-rational model. Our findings suggest that humans control for the extremeness of their lies in a manner reflective of rational social inference. These findings provide a new paradigm and formal framework for nuanced quantitative analysis of the role of rationality and theory of mind in lying and lie detecting behavior.

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.

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