Theory of Mind

cross cultural psychology

Theory of mind is the ability to separate our own mental states from the (possibly conflicting) mental states of others. Specifically, theory of mind involves understanding how mental processes such as intentions, beliefs, perceptions, and emotions influence behavior.

• Three mountain task- child sits on opposite side of table with a mountain model as a puppet, and is asked to describe what the puppet sees.
  • Before developing theory of mind, instead of describing the correct image, they will just repeat what they personally can see (egocentrism- perceiving the world solely from one’s own point of view). (theories of cognitive development)

Theory of mind is incredibly important for human interaction, and we use it all the time to understand others, resolve conflicts, and accommodate differing needs.

Review: mental representation #

theories of cognitive development

Pretend Play #

• by 18 months (very early, before verbal communication ability), children are observed to use object substitution to pretend that one thing is actually another.
  • Invisible object play also prevalent in slightly older children
• Children are able to distinguish between imagination and reality (decoupling: pretence representations are marked and kept separate from reality)
  • difference between primary representation (what the object actually is) and secondary representation (what the object represents)

In cross-cultural research:

• Pretend play seems to be universal, but manifest differently and to different degrees
  • American children = fantasy, caregiving play
  • Chinese children = social pretend play, without objects

What’s the function of pretend play?

• Important route for later-developing cognitive skills
  • develops understanding of symbols and early language skills: ability to allow something to stand in for something else (hirsh-pasek et al 2009)
  • counterfactual reasoning (weisberg & gopnik 2013): ability to imagine hypothetical situations in the world
  • similar structures to theory of mind (leslie 1994): understanding that other people have different mental states than ours. Develop ability to hold two representations at the same time (what I think, and what you think)

Theory of Mind in Chimpanzees #

1997: no solid evidence of theory of mind in nonhuman primates (Tomasello & Call 1997) due to 1996 study by Povinelli & Eddy

Preliminary evidence for theory of mind:

• sneaky copulation: non-alpha male chimps and bonobos mate where the alpha male cannot see, so there are no repercussions
  • ability to conceptualize the alpha male’s perception and mental state
• food behaviors: if nobody is around, chimps take more food for themselves
• alternative explanations: behavioral rules learned to predict the actions of others based on past experience

Experiments:

• Gaze-following: chimps look at the same place as the researcher, but after a while realizes that nothing is interesting there and looks away
  • very similar to gaze following in young human children, but appears earlier in children (6 months) than chimps (3 years)
• Pointing: if a researcher points to a door with a window, chimps will look out the window. If the door has no window, the chimp will just look at the door.
• Hare, Call & Tomasello 2000: subdominant chimp takes food hidden from the dominant chimp, rather than the food out in the open
  • Evil eye alternative hypothesis: chimps learn that if a dominant chimpanzee has directly looked at a piece of food, that food has been claimed. However, food with no direct eye contact is safe to eat
• Call et al 2004: perceived intention of experimenter affects behavior of chimp
  • if experimenter is unable to give chimp food due to perceived clumsiness, chimp will show patience
  • if experimenter is unwilling to give food due to intentional teasing, chimp will be frustrated
  • Very similar to 12-month-old human children
• Krupenye, Kano et al. 2016: false belief hidden in interesting videos
  • based on eye tracking, chimps understand that humans have a false belief (chimps look at the correct location of where the human actually looks for an object, even if the location is different from reality)

Conclusions:

• perception, knowledge, goals and intentions theory of mind
• no belief and desire theory of mind

Chimpanzees understand others based on their perceptions and goals; humans understand others based on their beliefs and desires.

Theory of Mind in Humans #

Cooperative eye hypothesis: Only humans have a highly visible white sclera (area of eye around pupils); this feature may have evolved to make it easier for humans to follow the gaze of other humans. In turn, gaze following facilitates joint attentional and cooperative behaviors.

• Older human children follow eye direction; infants (<10months) and primates follow head direction. (Experiment: look in the opposite direction as head is pointing)

Attribution of knowledge: When given the same visible-hidden task as the chimps (Hare, Call & Tomasello 2000), if a researcher asks where their toy is, older children will selectively give the hidden toy. On the other hand, younger children (<18 months) give either toy at random.

• Human cognition is adapted for cooperation, whereas chimpanzee cognition is adapted for competition.

Cross-cultural theory of mind: Callaghan et al. (2011) demonstrated gaze following and attribution of knowledge in many non-WEIRD cultures.

Understanding of desires: Repacholi & Gopnik (1997) broccoli study: nearly all children prefer crackers over broccoli; however, a researcher will clearly express that they prefer broccoli over crackers. When the researcher asks “can you give me some”, older children who understand the desires of the researcher will give them broccoli, but younger children will give them crackers. This transition away from egocentric thinking occurs sometime between 14 and 18 months of age.

Summary of Theory of Mind in child development #

Mind-to-world fit Perception: 12 months Knowledge: 24 months Belief: 4 years for explicit tasks (robust and replicable), 15 months for implicit tasks (still under consideration)

World-to-mind fit Goals: 12 months Intentions: 12 months Desires: 18 months

Joint Attention #

9-month revolution: Before babies become 9 months old, they can separately engage with objects, and interact with people. After they turn 9 months old, they can combine these two.

Joint attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. This is often initiated via gaze-following, pointing, or other forms of alerting.

• Visual joint attention is most important between 9 and 14 months; afterwards, it is mostly replaced by linguistic communication

Why is joint attention so important?

• World learning: children learn new words more effectively during episodes of joint attention (Tomasello & Farrar 1986)
• Perspective taking: children learn that the perspectives of others are different (three mountain task) - Moll & Meltzoff 2011
  • Simultaneous sharedness and individuality: both people are attentive to the same thing, but have different perspectives on that object.
• Common ground: children learn that we collectively know certain things due to shared history (Clark 2015).
• Joint attention creates stronger emotional connections between individuals. For example, watching a video together creates social closeness.
  • Especially important when constant physical closeness between parents and children is not available

Conceptual Core of Theory of Mind #

Theory of mind is an example of meta-representation:

Subject meta-represents (agent 2 represents (p)). Subject believes (agent 2 believes (p)).

False Belief Tasks #

False belief tasks are typically passed around 4-5 years of age; this shift is seen cross-culturally and appears to be independent of schooling.

• Parents start talking to their children using propositional attitudes around 4-5 years of age (“I think…”, “I believe…”, “I hope…”). Training studies have shown that deliberately introducing younger children to propositional attitudes can help them solve false-belief tasks.

Maxi task (Wimmer & Perner 1983): first false-belief task

• Children are shown that Maxi puts chocolate in cupboard, but later his mom moves it to the fridge
• Children are asked “Where will Maxi look for his chocolate?”
• Representation of false belief: even though we know the chocolate is in the fridge, using theory of mind we can understand that Maxi does not know
• No 3-4 year olds, 57% of 4-6 year olds, and 86% of 6-9 year olds give a correct response

Sally Anne Task (Baron-Cohen 1985): cross cultural psychology

• Criticisms: children have small attention spans, may not understand story, not relevant to life experience, misunderstand “where does Sally look for ball” to mean “Sally will eventually look for the ball in the basket”

Smarties Task (Mitchell 1991): 2-1 Principles of Developmental Psychopathology

False Belief Tasks in Chimpanzees #

Kaminski et al 2008:

• Two chimps, both see where high quality food is hidden
• Unknown shift condition: only one chimp sees that the high quality food is moved
  • Creates false belief in the second chimp
• Unknown lift condition: only one chimp sees that the high quality food is not moved
  • No false belief
• Chimpanzees did not differentiate between the two conditions (no evidence of false belief)

Children’s Representation of Mental States #

• 1-2 year olds represent intentions and desire
  • use rational imitation to learn behaviors from others
  • fail to represent false belief: can only predict behavior from reality
• 4-5 year olds understand belief
  • reality and representation of reality begin to diverge

New Testing Methods #

In order to succeed at any cognitive task, children need two factors:

• Competence: conceptual understanding of the problem
• Performance: use of other cognitive skills required to access and express understanding

False-belief tasks can be influenced in many ways that do not discount false belief:

• Reality bias: due to a lack of inhibitory control, it might be difficult for children to put their knowledge aside.
• Pragmatic interpretation: children may understand the question in a different manner than intended. For example, “where is the ball” could be interpreted as “where is the ball in reality”.

In order to measure theory of mind implicitly, experimenters use eye tracking technology in two ways:

• Anticipatory looking tasks: infants anticipate actions, and their gaze predicts what will happen next. For example, if someone’s about to sit down in a chair, they will look at the chair in anticipation.
  • Southgate, Senju, Caibra 2007: infants can already attribute false belief via anticipation at 25 months of age. This experiment removes both problems stated above (reality bias, pragmatic interpretation) by not asking children anything at all, and only observing them watch a video.
    • So far, this experiment could not be replicated
• Violation of expectation tasks: infants look longer at surprising events. If an infant understands others’ beliefs, they should look longer at someone who doesn’t do what they expect they would.
  • Onishi and Baillargeon 2005: 15 month old infants attributed false belief to an agent when the experimenter acts according to reality and not belief

Cross cultural research:

• Barrett et al. 2013: very little cross cultural variation in anticipatory looking tasks