Imagination and Reality

This chapter focuses on children’s ability to separate the imagined from the real and does so through a focus on imaginary companions. Imaginary companions appear in many forms; they can have physical forms (a puppet friend), or they can be purely mental creations. Typically, imaginary companions have ideas, emotions, and desires separate from the child’s, and thus they are saturated in theory-of-mind understandings. Although some authorities and many parents worry that imaginary companions are a particularly good example of children’s inability to separate the imagined from the real, research shows that young children easily distinguish between fantasy and fact, between the mental and the real, between imagined entities and real physical ones. Moreover, children who have imaginary companions not only distinguish between mind and reality, but also show numerous theory-of-mind strengths.

The Baby Boom

When and how do theory-of-mind understandings begin? This chapter assesses infants’ social understanding. Babies are not the mindless beings scientists and philosophers once thought them. Even in the first year of infancy, they have remarkable knowledge about their social worlds. This is not something babies gain innately. Instead, among their innate abilities is an extraordinary predisposition to learn, especially about their social worlds. Before age two, the end of infancy, children have a foundation for all the social development that is to come, setting the stage for the massive growth in social understanding seen in preschoolers. Like their preschool siblings, infants learn by careful observation and by putting pieces together.

Chimps, Dogs, and Us

This chapter addresses how animal studies are a crucial way to discover what makes people, and our theories of mind, uniquely human. Chimpanzee social understanding falls far short of human children’s. Nevertheless, people’s human theory of mind reflects beginnings owed to nonhuman ancestors. At the same time, human theory of mind is distinctive. It is broad, impacting almost all of human cognition and social interaction. It is fundamentally developmental, requiring more and more advanced mind-reading insights over an entire human life. It is also helpful and communicative. Even infants deploy their social–cognitive insights to help, communicate with, and learn about others. As such, while people sprang from animal ancestors, it is their advanced, rapidly developing social understanding that makes them uniquely human.

Mind Reading, Gossip, and Liars

This chapter discusses mind reading and theory of mind in adults, preparatory to looking at children in many further chapters. It starts by looking at adult gossip. Gossip appeals to people because it gives them a massive arena for learning about the inner workings of far more people than they could ever know individually. Through gossip, one learns about people’s intentions, quirks, likes, beliefs, deeds, and misdeeds. Then the chapter outlines in more detail just what theory of mind is, its components, and its structures. It is an everyday (not a scientific) theory used to understand ourselves and others; ordinary and commonsensical, it is also called commonsense psychology. Despite all its usefulness, people’s theories of mind can fail them. An everyday example is people’s sense of if and when someone is lying. Despite years of being concerned about lying, most adults’ theories about lying are wrong.

Friends, Secrets, and Lies

This chapter examines children’s theory of mind and how it can affect children’s, and adults’, lives. A key window on all of this is children’s understanding, achieved in the preschool years, that people can be ignorant and mistaken. Voluminous “false-belief” studies in countries worldwide illuminate this. Moreover, children’s achievement of these theory-of-mind milestones impacts their friendships or friendlessness. And being friendless can have disastrous consequences for a child’s social and academic life that can continue into adulthood. As well as acquiring friends and avoiding friendlessness, theory-of-mind advances impact a child’s ability to keep secrets, to inform and deceive others, and to persuade and argue—all skills vital to a person’s social well-being. Ultimately, young children who best understand false beliefs are not only better liars, secret keepers, and persuaders but also better accepted by their peers.

Stories, Theories, Minds

This concluding chapter sums up theory of mind by focusing on our human love of stories. All stories involve narratives, and all narratives involve situations and actions linked together by minds. Characters in fiction chart complicated paths and spin myriad thoughts. Yet people understand and identify with them easily. Theory of mind allows this to happen. Without the underpinning of mind, authors could not write fiction and readers could not understand it. Authors create credible fictional characters by fabricating for them wants, thoughts, feelings, plans, hopes, preferences, and actions that satisfy or thwart their intentions—all characteristics within the framework of ordinary theory of mind. This is why stories cannot be completely fictional. They must be based on an everyday psychology that a reader can understand or else there is nothing they can relate to.

Block by Block

This chapter continues where Chapter 5 left off. It examines how childhood theory of mind develops, looking for, and finding, the features of theory development: It unfolds in a progression of steps; it can manifest different sequences depending on children’s life circumstances; more advanced understandings are not only facilitated by but also constrained by children’s earlier understandings. Theory of mind is a complex edifice of ideas about people’s mental lives. Like any complex construction project, it must proceed in steps, over time. Profoundly deaf children of hearing parents, and those children’s theory-of-mind delays, nicely and intriguingly help illustrate all this.

Putting the Theory in Theory of Mind

This chapter looks at the development of a theory of mind. Compared to computers, humans are poor at data mining. Instead, humans are terrific at creating an overarching theory to explain the facts and then using that theory to make sense of new details that arise. This way of thinking, called everyday theoretical thinking, goes far beyond data mining. People’s basic theory building proceeds from the theory-of-mind skills they learn as babies and young children. If theorizing explains how children accumulate their ideas, then children’s theory-of-mind developments should show three signature features of scientific theory development: Developing theories of mind should unfold in a progression of steps; the changes should grow from evidence, so different experiences can yield different sequences of understanding; and prior knowledge should not only constrain but also facilitate later learning.

Possible Worlds, Possible Minds

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.

Theory of Mind at Work

This chapter looks at theory of mind at work. Theory of mind is at work in ways big and small, in ways hidden and obvious. It is a foundation for people’s human way of looking at the world, so whether false or true, whether directed at themselves or at others, it colors their thinking, their institutions, and their basic beliefs. Societally, it shapes legal and moral codes, written and pictorial conventions, and screen media. Individually, it shapes people’s feelings, their gift giving, their teaching and learning, or their failures to learn. It is at work in adults and in children and in the way people can bring together their adult and childhood selves. Ultimately, it is a foundational piece of who we were, who we are, who we will become, and how those knit together.