Developmental progression of mental state understandings in infancy

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tik-Sze Carrey Siu ◽  
Him Cheung
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental State ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Experimental Setup ◽  
Visual Access ◽  
Developmental Progression ◽  
Emotional Display ◽  
Violation Of Expectation ◽  
Verbal Theory

This study establishes a sequence of developing mental state understandings in infants. We used three violation-of-expectation paradigms to assess fifty-seven 16-month-olds’ ability to (a) infer an actress’s intention from her prior repeated approaches to an object, (b) recognize her emotion by watching her facial-emotional display, and (c) deduce her false belief by noticing her lack of visual access to a change in the experimental setup. Contingencies between passing the three tasks were analyzed. Results showed that the infants made sense of intention first, followed by emotion, and then false belief. This progressive sequence parallels what has been found with preschoolers using verbal theory-of-mind tasks.

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.

Theory of Mind

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Wilde Astington ◽  
Claire Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief ◽  
School Age ◽  
Comprehensive Description ◽  
Deontic Reasoning ◽  
Developmental Progression ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Atypical Development

The chapter begins with an explanation of key foundational concepts in theory of mind, such as mental representation and false belief. We then discuss the history and current broad scope of the term, proposing a developmental-componential view that incorporates intuitive and reflective aspects of theory of mind. We continue with a comprehensive description of the developmental progression of theory of mind: from infants’ intuitive understanding of ordinary actions as reflecting others’ attention and intentions, through toddlers’ appreciation of world-inconsistent goals and preschool developments in understanding representational mental states, to school-age children’s mastery of an interpretative and complex theory of mind. We consideren passantindividual differences in development, as well as atypical development, such as in autism. Finally, new directions for research are explored, in the areas of neurology, education, and deontic reasoning.

scholarly journals The Effects Of Adult Ageing And Culture On Theory Of Mind

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
louise phillips ◽  
Louisa Lawrie ◽  
Alexandre Schaefer ◽  
Min Hooi Yong
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Social Rules ◽  
Mental State Attribution ◽  
Generational Changes ◽  
False Belief Reasoning

Older adults tend to have poorer mental state understanding (Theory of Mind, ToM) than their younger counterparts, including in both Western and Asian cultures. The current study aimed to directly investigate whether there are any cultural differences in the pattern of age effects on ToM tasks. Given evidence of cultural differences in the development of ToM across childhood, we predicted that older Asian adults would find the mental state tasks particularly resource-demanding. We used two ToM tests which made differing demands on updating multiple mental states (the false belief task) and applying social rules to mental state processing (the faux pas task). We also looked at the role of education, socioeconomic status, individualism versus collectivism and working memory (WM). A total of 298 participants from UK and Malaysia completed faux pas, false belief, and WM tasks. Results showed that interacting effects of age and culture were evident in faux pas detection, some aspects of false belief reasoning, and WM tasks, with older Malaysian participants performing poorly compared to the other groups. We also found that WM fully mediated age differences in ToM in the Malaysian sample. High levels of individualism were associated with poorer faux pas detection, but education and socioeconomic status did not explain additional variance in the ToM tasks. This pattern of results may reflect generational changes in the familiarity and cognitive load of explicit mental state attribution, along with cultural differences in the pace and nature of cognitive ageing.

scholarly journals Testing the stability of theory of mind: A longitudinal approach

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. e0241721
Author(s):  
Diane Poulin-Dubois ◽  
Naomi Azar ◽  
Brandon Elkaim ◽  
Kimberly Burnside
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Social Communication ◽  
False Belief ◽  
The Social ◽  
Longitudinal Approach ◽  
Explicit Theory ◽  
Second Year ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Violation Of Expectation

An explicit understanding of false belief develops around the age of four years. However, tasks based on spontaneous responses have revealed an implicit understanding of belief and other theory of mind constructs in infants in their second year of life. The few longitudinal studies that have examined conceptual continuity of theory of mind from infancy to early childhood have reported mixed findings. Here we report two longitudinal experiments to investigate the developmental relation between implicit and explicit theory of mind. No link was observed in the first experiment between false belief and intention understanding measured at 14 and 18 months with the violation of expectation paradigm and tasks measuring explicit and implicit false belief at four or five years of age. In the second experiment, infants aged 18 months were tested with a battery of tasks that measured knowledge inference and false belief. They were then tested with the theory of mind scale at five years of age. The parents completed the Children’s Social Understanding Scale (CSUS) and the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ). As in the first experiment, there were no associations between early and later forms of theory of mind. We suggest that these findings do not support the view that there is conceptual continuity in theory of mind development.

Parent–child picture-book reading, mothers' mental state language and children's theory of mind

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 673-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUAN E. ADRIAN ◽  
ROSA A. CLEMENTE ◽  
LIDON VILLANUEVA ◽  
CAROLIEN RIEFFE
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Book Reading ◽  
Mental State Language ◽  
Picture Book Reading ◽  
Reading At Home ◽  
State Language ◽  
Parent Child

This study focuses on parent–child book reading and its connection to the development of a theory of mind. First, parents were asked to report about frequency of parent–child storybook reading at home. Second, mothers were asked to read four picture-books to thirty-four children between 4;0 and 5;0. Both frequency of parent–child storybook reading at home, and mother's use of mental state terms in picture-books reading tasks were significantly associated with success on false belief tasks, after partialling out a number of potential mediators such as age of children, verbal IQ, paternal education, and words used by mothers in joint picture-book reading. Among the different mental state references (cognitive terms, desires, emotions and perceptions), it was found that the frequency and variety of cognitive terms, but also the frequency of emotional terms correlated positively with children's false belief performance. Relationships between mental state language and theory of mind are discussed.

Mothers’ and Teachers’ Mental-State Discourse With Preschoolers During Storybook Reading

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margalit Ziv ◽  
Marie-Lyne Smadja ◽  
Dorit Aram
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Storybook Reading ◽  
Mental Causality ◽  
Points Of View

Mothers and teachers play a pivotal role in promoting preschool children’s theory of mind. This study explored and compared mothers’ and teachers’ mental-state discourse during storybook reading with children, focusing on their use of mental terms and references to three mental-state aspects: false belief, mental causality, and different points of view. Participants were 60 mothers and their children, and 60 teachers and 300 preschoolers. Mothers read the book to one child and teachers read the same book to groups of 5 children. The book involved a central false-belief theme. Main findings revealed that mothers and teachers elaborated on book-related mental states. However, teachers’ discourse included more mental terms and more references to mental causality and different people’s perspectives. The findings suggest that reading books with rich mental-state contents encourages rich discourse on mental-state elements. Parents and teachers should be guided in how to use their unique knowledge and relationships with children to enrich their mediation of books’ mental-state aspects and discuss them with children.

scholarly journals Great apes use self-experience to anticipate an agent’s action in a false-belief test

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (42) ◽  
pp. 20904-20909 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fumihiro Kano ◽  
Christopher Krupenye ◽  
Satoshi Hirata ◽  
Masaki Tomonaga ◽  
Josep Call
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Behavioral Cues ◽  
Visual Access ◽  
Nonhuman Species ◽  
Previous Location

Human social life depends on theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others. A signature of theory of mind, false belief understanding, requires representing others’ views of the world, even when they conflict with one’s own. After decades of research, it remains controversial whether any nonhuman species possess a theory of mind. One challenge to positive evidence of animal theory of mind, the behavior-rule account, holds that animals solve such tasks by responding to others’ behavioral cues rather than their mental states. We distinguish these hypotheses by implementing a version of the “goggles” test, which asks whether, in the absence of any additional behavioral cues, animals can use their own self-experience of a novel barrier being translucent or opaque to determine whether another agent can see through the same barrier. We incorporated this paradigm into an established anticipatory-looking false-belief test for great apes. In a between-subjects design, apes experienced a novel barrier as either translucent or opaque, although both looked identical from afar. While being eye tracked, all apes then watched a video in which an actor saw an object hidden under 1 of 2 identical boxes. The actor then scuttled behind the novel barrier, at which point the object was relocated and then removed. Only apes who experienced the barrier as opaque visually anticipated that the actor would mistakenly search for the object in its previous location. Great apes, therefore, appeared to attribute differential visual access based specifically on their own past perceptual experience to anticipate an agent’s actions in a false-belief test.

Synchrony in the onset of mental state understanding across cultures? A study among children in Samoa

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Mayer ◽  
Birgit E. Träuble
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Large Sample ◽  
Location Task ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Continuous Survey ◽  
Suitable Object

The development of false belief understanding in Samoa was investigated in two studies testing more than 300 children. Children’s understanding was assessed with a change of location task. The results of study 1 suggest that Samoan children improve gradually and slowly, with no succeeding majority before 8 years of age. One third of the 10–13-year-olds still failed. Study 2 used a different translation among 55 children from 4–8 years of age and supports the former results. These findings speak for the cultural variability of theory of mind development and provide the first cross-cultural continuous survey on false belief understanding of children older than 5 years of age with a large sample in a place where mental states are no suitable object for conjecture.

scholarly journals Influence of exposure to children’s movies on television on theory-of- mind acquisition in preschoolers

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Devi Rusli ◽  
Dian Novita Ariani ◽  
Nurmina Nurmina ◽  
Rinaldi Rinaldi
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief

Recently cases of harness which is conducted by children indicated that decrease capability of children understanding against other's mental states Children’s ability to grasp other’s mental states (theory of mind) is important in the context of socialization. Previous research has not investigated the duration in measuring the exposure of narrative media (children's movies on television), which is one of the impacts on the acquisition of ToM. The movie on television represents the relations between children and their mental state. This study aims to investigate the influence of exposure to children’s movies on television towards children's ToM acquisition among preschoolers. ToM was assessed using a ToM scale by Wellman and Liu, and exposure to children’s movies on television was measured with a questionnaire. The study has been conducted to 85 preschoolers ages 3–5 years old/36-71 months ((M = 4.88 SD = 0,683), with the involvement of their parents to fill the questionnaires. The result of this study shows that exposure to children's movies on television does not significantly influence children’s ToM. The strong relations between the two is considered false belief (FB) since the result of the study shows that.

scholarly journals Theory of mind tested by implicit false belief: A simple and full‐fledged mental state attribution

FEBS Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Egawa ◽  
Keisuke Kawasaki ◽  
Taketsugu Hayashi ◽  
Ryota Akikawa ◽  
Toshiyuki Someya ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental State ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Mental State Attribution
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