Developing a Theory of Mind: Are Infants Sensitive to How Other People Represent the World?

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
The World

Triggers of Thought: Impressions within Hume’s Theory of Mind

2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Associative Processes ◽  
Sensory Inputs ◽  
The World ◽  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Conceptual Resources

This essay argues that Humean impressions are triggers of associative processes, which enable us to form stable patterns of thought that co-vary with our experiences of the world. It will thus challenge the importance of the Copy Principle by claiming that it is the regularity with which certain kinds of sensory inputs motivate certain sets of complex ideas that matters for the discrimination of ideas. This reading is conducive to Hume’s account of perception, because it avoids the impoverishment of conceptual resources so typical for empiricist theories of meaning and explains why ideas should be based on impressions, although impressions cannot be known to mirror matters of fact. Dieser Aufsatz argumentiert dafür, dass humesche Eindrücke („impressions“) Auslöser von assoziativen Prozessen sind, welche es uns ermöglichen, stabile Denkmuster zu bilden, die mit unseren Erfahrungen der Welt kovariant sind. Der Aufsatz stellt somit die Wichtigkeit des Kopien-Prinzips in Frage, nämlich dadurch, dass behauptet wird, für die Unterscheidung der Ideen sei die Regelmäßigkeit maßgeblich, mit der gewisse Arten von sensorischen Eingaben gewisse Mengen von komplexen Ideen motivieren. Diese Lesart trägt zu einem Verständnis von Humes Auffassung der Wahrnehmung bei, da sie die Verarmung der begrifflichen Mittel, die für empiristische Theorien der Bedeutung so typisch ist, vermeidet und erklärt, warum Ideen auf Eindrücken basieren sollten, obwohl Eindrücke nicht als Abbildungen von Tatsachen erkannt werden können.

scholarly journals Autistic Adults are Not Impaired at Maintaining or Switching Between Counterfactual and Factual Worlds: An ERP Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather J. Ferguson ◽  
Lena Wimmer ◽  
Jo Black ◽  
Mahsa Barzy ◽  
David Williams
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Cognitive Flexibility ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Critical Word ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Contextual Cues ◽  
Brain Potential ◽  
The World ◽  
Autistic Adults ◽  
Set Up

AbstractWe report an event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment that tests whether autistic adults are able to maintain and switch between counterfactual and factual worlds. Participants (N = 48) read scenarios that set up a factual or counterfactual scenario, then either maintained the counterfactual world or switched back to the factual world. When the context maintained the world, participants showed appropriate detection of the inconsistent critical word. In contrast, when participants had to switch from a counterfactual to factual world, they initially experienced interference from the counterfactual context, then favoured the factual interpretation of events. None of these effects were modulated by group, despite group-level impairments in Theory of Mind and cognitive flexibility among the autistic adults. These results demonstrate that autistic adults can appropriately use complex contextual cues to maintain and/or update mental representations of counterfactual and factual events.

scholarly journals From Mind to Picture: A Systematic Review on Children’s and Adolescents’ Understanding of the Link between Artists and Pictures

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Romina Vivaldi ◽  
Richard P. Jolley ◽  
Sarah E Rose
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Child Psychology ◽  
Inclusion Criteria ◽  
Developmental Milestones ◽  
Italian Language ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

Pictorial symbols have multiple layers of meaning: not only do they represent objects, events and ideas about the world, they also represent the intentions of artists as well as other artist attributes (age, skill, originality and knowledge, mood, style and sentience). Although children’s developmental milestones of pictorial understanding have been the subject of a long-standing debate, their understanding of the relation between artists and pictures has often been neglected. The aim of this article was to conduct a systematic review on children’s and adolescents’ understanding of the relation between artists and pictures. PsycINFO and Web of Science databases were searched for English, Spanish, German, and Italian language empirical studies that examined this link in 2- to 18-year- olds. Forty-two citations (64 studies) from 14 different countries met the inclusion criteria. Results revealed the majority of the studies focused on the understanding of the artist’s intention. Although research on children’s and adolescents’ understanding of other attributes is scarce, and there were inconsistencies across the methodologies used, it seems that they first acknowledge intention and only later become more aware of how artist’s attributes are communicated through intention. The results of the review encourage subsequent research to provide a clearer conceptualised model of child and adolescent understanding of the artist-picture relationship. Such a model should be placed within a wider framework of the network of relationship between the artist, picture, world and beholder. Finally, consideration of how the development of understanding the artist-picture relationship is bi-directionally influenced with other developmental milestones in the child psychology is encouraged, particularly picture-production and theory of mind, and variations in atypical populations.

Using Argumentation to Develop Critical Thinking About Social Issues in the Classroom

2021 ◽  
pp. 508-522
Author(s):  
N. Leigh Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Real World ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
World Today ◽  
The World ◽  
Framework For Teaching ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Dialogic Argumentation

Thanks to the polarized nature of politics in the world today, students need to learn how to think critically about social issues. Argumentation can be both a type of critical thinking and a tool with which to teach students to think critically about social issues. This chapter lays out a framework for teaching students how to develop critical thinking about real world issues through the use of dialogic argumentation. The impact of dialogic argumentative activities in the classroom are discussed, particularly as they relate to the development of metacognition and theory of mind, as well as how they help students develop an “inner-locutor” that allows them to evaluate both their position and opposing positions. Finally, a model for how these elements contribute to students' value-loaded critical thinking about social issues is outlined.

Knowledge

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-91
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Neural Firing ◽  
Motor Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Sensory Motor

For the semantic pointer theory of mind, the bearers of knowledge are not abstract propositions but rather patterns of neural firing that constitute mental representations, including concepts, beliefs, nonverbal rules, images, and emotions. This neurocognitive perspective suggests new answers for questions about the generation of candidates for knowledge and their relations to the world via sensory-motor interactions. Semantic pointers support knowledge that beliefs are true or false, how to do things using multimodal rules, and of things via sensory-motor experience. The Semantic Pointer Architecture meshes well with coherence-based justification that abandons foundational certainty for fallible attempts to fit diverse elements of knowledge into the best overall explanation. Knowledge has important social dimensions.

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.

The genre effect

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Gavaler ◽  
Dan Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Quality Perceptions ◽  
The World ◽  
Literary Quality

Abstract Some purport that literary fiction is determined by high inference demands. The subgenre of science fiction is often defined by story-world tropes that may reduce inferential demands. However, science fiction with high inference demands may also constitute literary fiction. Instead of inferential demands, it may be readers’ responses to setting that distinguishes science fiction and narrative realism. In two experiments, a story was manipulated for contemporary and science-fiction settings. Also, a version of each text with and without explanatory statements manipulated inference demand. Readers perceived the science-fiction text as lower in literary quality. For science fiction, readers also exerted less inference effort for theory of mind, but more for understanding the world. Regardless of inference effort, participants who read the story in the science-fiction world performed more poorly on comprehension. Readers’ expectations triggered by setting tropes seem to be particularly potent determinants of literary quality perceptions, inference effort, and comprehension.

scholarly journals Theory of Mind and evidentiality in Romani-Bulgarian bilingual children

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hristo Kyuchukov ◽  
Jill De Villiers
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
The World ◽  
Bilingual Group ◽  
False Belief Reasoning ◽  
Contradictory Evidence ◽  
Belief Reasoning

Theory of Mind and evidentiality in Romani-Bulgarian bilingual children The paper reports two studies of the development of false belief reasoning in bilingual Roma children in Bulgaria. No previous work has considered Roma children. Two studies were conducted, and in the second study the Roma children spoke a dialect of Romani that contains evidential markers, as does Bulgarian, their second language. Results reveal no advantage of bilingualism, and similar results with age to that found in other groups across the world. The bilingual group had better understanding of evidentials than the monolingual Bulgarian group, possibly related to the linguistic character of the markings. There is contradictory evidence about the relation of ToM and understanding of evidentiality.

Possible Worlds, Possible Minds

Reading Minds ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 89-97
Author(s):  
Henry M. Wellman
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Initial Framework

Across the world and across history, adults have developed widely divergent beliefs about people and their minds and actions, capacities and limits. Yet, these spring from, and depart from, early childhood theories, which are remarkably similar worldwide. This chapter considers what some of these divergent beliefs about people are like and how they arise from earlier understandings. How? Universal processes and beginnings allow and propel the development of vastly different belief systems, and theory of mind plays a particularly powerful role in these processes and outcomes. Human children worldwide share a framework theory of mind even when adults’ conceptions of people are less similar worldwide than children’s. Cultures have centuries in which to develop unique understandings of persons, selves, and societies. At the same time, all of them are grounded in the same initial framework of young children.

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