Theory Of Mind In Children Research Articles

Elicitation of First-Order 'Theory of Mind in Children with Autism

Failure to pass certain kinds of false belief task is a characteristic both of preschool children and of children with autism. In the present study normally developing children, children with autism and children with learning difficulties, all of whom had failed a standard first-order false belief task, were given five replications of the standard false belief task with the inclusion of enhanced behavioural and emotional cues to the protagonist's false belief on the four repetitions. The results showed that the children with autism as well as some of the normally developing subjects benefited to a significant extent from the enhanced cues but not when the task was repeated without enhancement. The children with learning difficulties, by contrast, showed no improvement. The implications of the results for current cognitive theories of autistic dysfunction are discussed.

Theory of mind in nonhuman primates.

Since the BBS article in which Premack and Woodruff (1978) asked "Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?," it has been repeatedly claimed that there is observational and experimental evidence that apes have mental state concepts, such as "want" and "know." Unlike research on the development of theory of mind in childhood, however, no substantial progress has been made through this work with nonhuman primates. A survey of empirical studies of imitation, self-recognition, social relationships, deception, role-taking, and perspective-taking suggests that in every case where nonhuman primate behavior has been interpreted as a sign of theory of mind, it could instead have occurred by chance or as a product of nonmentalistic processes such as associative learning or inferences based on nonmental categories. Arguments to the effect that, in spite of this, the theory of mind hypothesis should be accepted because it is more parsimonious than alternatives or because it is supported by convergent evidence are not compelling. Such arguments are based on unsupportable assumptions about the role of parsimony in science and either ignore the requirement that convergent evidence proceed from independent assumptions, or fail to show that it supports the theory of mind hypothesis over nonmentalist alternatives. Progress in research on theory of mind requires experimental procedures that can distinguish the theory of mind hypothesis from nonmentalist alternatives. A procedure that may have this potential is proposed. It uses conditional discrimination training and transfer tests to determine whether chimpanzees have the concept "see." Commentators are invited to identify flaws in the procedure and to suggest alternatives.

幼児・児童の〈表象的心の理論〉の発達

幼児・児童の〈表象的心の理論〉の発達

Young children's understanding of conflicting mental representation predicts suggestibility.

This study examined the relation between developmental suggestibility effects and preschoolers' emerging ability to reason about conflicting mental representations (CMRs). Three- to 5-year-olds listened to a story accompanied by pictures. Following a 4-min delay, children answered straightforward and misleading questions about the story. One week later, their memory for the story was assessed. Children also completed tasks indexing their ability to reason about CMRs. Stepwise regression analyses revealed that suggestibility was negatively related to performance on CMR tasks. This finding remained significant after controlling for age, children's level of initial encoding of the event, and their ability to retrieve event details when not misled. An integration is proposed between children's theory of mind and source monitoring that may help to explain early developmental changes in suggestibility.

Theory of mind in children with autistic disorder: evidence of developmental progression and the role of verbal ability.

The present study investigated theory of mind in two groups of autistic children with markedly different verbal mental ages but comparable nonverbal ability and chronological ages, using a range of theory of mind belief tasks. The aims were to look for evidence of developmental progression of theory of mind ability in autistic children and to examine the role played by verbal ability in task performance. The results showed hierarchical patterns of performance across tasks, suggesting a developmental sequence of emerging aspects of theory of mind ability. There was clear evidence that verbal ability is an important contributor to successful task performance.

Exploration of the Autistic Child's Theory of Mind: Knowledge, Belief, and Communication

Exploration of the Autistic Child's Theory of Mind: Knowledge, Belief, and Communication

The Effects of Affectionate Contact on Theory of Mind and Mental State Talk in Parent-Child Dyads

Theory of mind (ToM) is the understanding that the actions of others are influence by their mental states: desires, emotions, beliefs and intentions.This study tested 46 parent-child dyads with children ages 3.5-4.5 years old to examine the effects of affectionate contact (i.e. cuddling) on parental use of mental state words (words that describe emotions, beliefs and desires) and child ToM task performance. Dyads were placed in one of two conditions, cuddling and no cuddling, while reading a wordless story about a snowman. Children were then instructed through a series of tasks designed to measure their ToM and executive functioning skills, the ability to switch between rules, a foundational skill for ToM development. Results showed that no significant differences were found between conditions on ToM task performance or use of mental state words. Differences amongst conditions on executive functioning task performance began to approach significance. Additionally, a significant positive correlation was found between the use of mental state words and ToM task performance, as well as a significant positive correlation between mental state words and executive functioning task performance.