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

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.

Association between Theory of Mind and Peer Problems

The current study was designed to investigate the relationship between theory of mind (ToM) development and peer problems in Pakistani children (N=80). The non-probability purposive sampling technique with survey research design had been used for data collection. Pakistani children with age ranged 4-6 years (Mage = 5.29) were recruited who?took two false belief tasks.?To tap into peer relationship of these children, their parents completed?strength and difficulty?questionnaire. For demographic variables, descriptive statistics was used. Pearson product correlation and linear regression were used to test the hypothesis. Results revealed that performance of 6 years 6 months and older was above chance on all false belief tasks, supporting the universality of ToM development with different age ranges in different cultures. Also, theory of mind negatively predicted peer relationship?problems?of this sample, revealing real life implication of mentalizing for interaction in social world. Research indicated that false belief comprehension is key to better social adjustment and the participants of this study also showed that a child's understanding of mental state terms is critical for better social adaptation.

Multisession Anodal tDCS on the Right Temporo-Parietal Junction Improves Mentalizing Processes in Adults with Autistic Traits

Persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have impaired mentalizing skills. In this study, a group of persons with ASD traits (high-AQ scores) initially received sham tDCS before completing a pre-test in two mentalizing tasks: false belief and self-other judgments. Over the next week, on four consecutive days, they received sessions of anodal electrical stimulation (a-tDCS) over the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ), a region frequently associated with the theory of mind. On the last day, after the stimulation session, they completed a new set of mentalizing tasks. A control group (with low-AQ scores) matched in age, education and intelligence received just sham stimulation and completed the same pre-test and post-test. The results showed that the high-AQ group improved their performance (faster responses), after a-tDCS, in the false belief and in the self-other judgments of mental features, whereas they did not change performance in the false photographs or the self-other judgments of physical features. These selective improvements cannot be attributed to increased familiarity with the tasks, because the performance of the low-AQ control group remained stable about one week later. Therefore, our study provides initial proof that tDCS could be used to improve mentalizing skills in persons with ASD traits.

Seeing the World From Others’ Perspective: 14-Month-Olds Show Altercentric Modulation Effects by Others’ Beliefs

Humans have a propensity to readily adopt others’ perspective, which often influences their behavior even when it seemingly should not. This altercentric influence has been widely studied in adults, yet we lack an understanding of its ontogenetic origins. The current studies investigated whether 14-month-olds’ search in a box for potential objects is modulated by another person’s belief about the box’s content. We varied the person’s potential belief such that in her presence/absence an object was removed, added, or exchanged for another, leading to her true/false belief about the object’s presence (Experiment 1, n = 96); or transformed into another object, leading to her true/false belief about the object’s identity (i.e., the objects represented under a specific aspect, Experiment 2, n = 32). Infants searched longer if the other person believed that an object remained in the box, showing an altercentric influence early in development. These results suggest that infants spontaneously represent others’ beliefs involving multiple objects and raise the possibility that infants can appreciate that others encode the world under a unique aspect.

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

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.

Minimal mindreaders let spinning dogs lie: New evidence for the dual-process account of human mindreading

<p>Five experiments investigated evidence for a dual-process account of mindreading (Apperly, 2010). This account is motivated by two puzzles: First, why is it that three-year-olds fail standard false-belief tests when looking patterns infer that infants are sensitive to others’ false beliefs? Secondly, why is adult mindreading sometimes slow and effortful, and at other times fast and effortless? The seemingly contradictory observations may be explained by drawing upon two relatively distinct mindreading abilities: ‘Efficient’ processing supports precocious infant performances in non-verbal tasks and fast-paced social interaction in adults, while the later developing ‘flexible’ processing permits full blown understanding of beliefs and facilitates correct verbal responding in standard false-belief tests. Evidence for this theory can be sought by exploiting the idea that there are ‘signature limits’ to the type of information that can be efficiently processed. One conjecture is that representations underpinning efficient belief-tracking relate agents to objects, leading to the prediction that efficient processing cannot handle false-beliefs involving identity. Experiments 1 and 2 used a novel action-prediction paradigm to determine if adults’ reaction-time patterns differed between two false-belief tasks, one involving a standard change-of-location scenario, and one which also incorporated an identity component. The findings revealed equivalent flexible processing across both tasks. However, there were distinct reaction-time profiles between the tasks such that efficient belief-tracking was only observed in the change-of-location task. The absence of efficient processing in the task incorporating an identity component supports the conjecture that efficient belief-tracking is limited to relational, rather than propositional attitudes. A second conjecture is that representations underpinning efficient belief-tracking either do not specify agents’ locations or do not specify objects’ orientations. This leads to the prediction that efficient belief-tracking alone will not yield expectations about agents’ perspectives. In a novel object-detection paradigm, Experiments 3 to 5 tested the extent to which adults efficiently tracked the belief of a passive bystander in two closely-matched but conceptually distinct tasks. In a task involving homogenous objects, reaction times were involuntarily influenced by the presence of the bystander. By contrast, in a second task in which the object could be differently perceived depending on where the agent was located in relation to that object, the presence of the agent did not influence adults’ response times, supporting the second conjecture.</p>

Minimal mindreaders let spinning dogs lie: New evidence for the dual-process account of human mindreading

<p>Five experiments investigated evidence for a dual-process account of mindreading (Apperly, 2010). This account is motivated by two puzzles: First, why is it that three-year-olds fail standard false-belief tests when looking patterns infer that infants are sensitive to others’ false beliefs? Secondly, why is adult mindreading sometimes slow and effortful, and at other times fast and effortless? The seemingly contradictory observations may be explained by drawing upon two relatively distinct mindreading abilities: ‘Efficient’ processing supports precocious infant performances in non-verbal tasks and fast-paced social interaction in adults, while the later developing ‘flexible’ processing permits full blown understanding of beliefs and facilitates correct verbal responding in standard false-belief tests. Evidence for this theory can be sought by exploiting the idea that there are ‘signature limits’ to the type of information that can be efficiently processed. One conjecture is that representations underpinning efficient belief-tracking relate agents to objects, leading to the prediction that efficient processing cannot handle false-beliefs involving identity. Experiments 1 and 2 used a novel action-prediction paradigm to determine if adults’ reaction-time patterns differed between two false-belief tasks, one involving a standard change-of-location scenario, and one which also incorporated an identity component. The findings revealed equivalent flexible processing across both tasks. However, there were distinct reaction-time profiles between the tasks such that efficient belief-tracking was only observed in the change-of-location task. The absence of efficient processing in the task incorporating an identity component supports the conjecture that efficient belief-tracking is limited to relational, rather than propositional attitudes. A second conjecture is that representations underpinning efficient belief-tracking either do not specify agents’ locations or do not specify objects’ orientations. This leads to the prediction that efficient belief-tracking alone will not yield expectations about agents’ perspectives. In a novel object-detection paradigm, Experiments 3 to 5 tested the extent to which adults efficiently tracked the belief of a passive bystander in two closely-matched but conceptually distinct tasks. In a task involving homogenous objects, reaction times were involuntarily influenced by the presence of the bystander. By contrast, in a second task in which the object could be differently perceived depending on where the agent was located in relation to that object, the presence of the agent did not influence adults’ response times, supporting the second conjecture.</p>

Adopting the 4Ms Framework and Age-Friendly Concepts Into Dental Care

We report on launching a dental initiative that addresses healthy aging and oral health, focusing on prevention and changing the false belief that aging inevitably involves deterioration in oral health. Our project integrates the age-friendly health system's principles into specialty dental care at Eastman Institute for Oral Health, URMC. We established an oral health-centered framework with project elements of the 4Ms - what matters, medication, mentation, and mobility. We developed pilot 4Ms templates integrated into dental charts to implement healthy-aging key oral health processes, including oral health assessment, treatment planning, and oral hygiene support. We engaged all members of the dental team through educational sessions for providing care for patients affected by Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. We leveraged on locally available interdisciplinary resources and the collaboration reflecting undergoing efforts at the University of Rochester Division of Geriatrics and the Finger Lakes Geriatric Education Center, a Geriatric Workforce Enhancement.