Unexpected Contents Research Articles

The Interfunctional Relationship Between Theory of Mind and Private Speech

Background. Theory of mind is the capacity to explain and predict the behavior of others. Charles Fernyhough’s dialogical model of psychological functions offers a vision of theory of mind that considers the social dimension and the importance of language, especially inner and private speech, for a person’s ability to represent and manipulate multiple perspectives, and its connection to executive function. Objective. There is little direct research on Fernyhough’s model. The present study addressed that gap by studying the relationship between theory of mind, private speech, and executive function (planning) in the preschool years. Design. Data were collected from a total of 86 preschool children from the Mexican state of Tlaxcala; 24 were from the first grade of preschool, 30 from the second, and 32 from the third. Their degree of internalization and their speech types (i.e., social and private) were obtained by coding their utterances during free play and during performance of a Tower of London task. Lastly, their theory of mind was assessed with a change of location and an unexpected contents task. Results. No correlation was found between children’s theory of mind and their degree of internalization. However, inaudible private speech was correlated (negatively) to theory of mind performance in the third grade of preschool. Furthermore, their scores on the Tower of London task were negatively correlated with social speech and positively correlated with inaudible private speech, while the reverse was true for time of execution. Conclusion. The results suggested that the degree of internalization is a measure of the regulative function of language, not the ability to manipulate perspectives, and that it is inadequate for capturing subtle differences between performance and speech types. Role-playing conditions were recommended as better tasks for exploring the capacities for manipulating and understanding different perspectives during the preschool years.

Growing out of your own mind: Reexamining the development of the self-other difference in the unexpected contents task

The unexpected contents task is a well-established measure for studying young children's developing theory of mind. The task measures whether children understand that others have a false belief about a deceptive container and whether children can track the representational change in their own beliefs about the container's contents. Performance on both questions improves between the ages of 3 and 4. A previous meta-analysis (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001) found little evidence for a difference in children's responses on these questions, but did not investigate the weak effect size that was reported for the interaction between age and question type. The two meta-analyses reported here update the literature review, and find a more robust interaction between question type and age. Three-year-olds showed better performance on questions about their own representational change than others' false belief, while older children showed the reverse pattern. A mega-analysis of a sample of over 1200 children between the ages of 36–60 months then showed the same result. This response pattern requires novel theoretical interpretations, which include reframing the development of children's understanding of false belief.

Animals, Superman, Fairy and God: Children’s Attributions of Nonhuman Agent Beliefs in Madrid and London

Abstract There have been major developments in the understanding of children’s nonhuman concepts, particularly God concepts, within the past two decades, with a body of cross-cultural studies accumulating. Relatively less research has studied those of non-Christian faiths or children’s concepts of popular occult characters. This paper describes two studies, one in Spain and one in England, examining 5- to 10-year-olds’ human and nonhuman agent beliefs. Both settings were secular, but the latter comprised a Muslim majority. Children were given a false-belief (unexpected contents) task in which they were asked to infer about three humans (mother, classmate, teacher), three animals (dog, bear, bird) and three supernatural beings (Superman, fairy, God). Similar false beliefs about humans, with subtle differences in inferences about animals and supernatural beings, were found between the two locations. In London different patterns for God between participants with a family religion, in particular Muslims, and non-affiliates, were identified as well as an association between religious beliefs and practice and inferences about God. Findings are discussed in the light of theory and research on the role of sociocultural inputs in children’s theory of mind development and understanding of agency.

Testing the validity of a continuous false belief task in 3- to 7-year-old children

In two studies, we examined young children’s performance on the paper-and-pencil version of the Sandbox task, a continuous measure of false belief, and its relations with other false belief and inhibition tasks. In Study 1, 96 children aged 3 to 7years completed three false belief tasks (Sandbox, Unexpected Contents, and Appearance/Reality) and two inhibition tasks (Head–Shoulders–Knees–Toes and Grass/Snow). Results revealed that false belief bias—a measure of egocentrism—on the Sandbox task correlated with age but not with the Unexpected Contents or Appearance/Reality task or with measures of inhibition after controlling for age. In Study 2, 90 3- to 7-year-olds completed five false belief tasks (Sandbox, Unexpected Contents, Appearance/Reality, Change of Location, and a second-order false belief task), two inhibition tasks (Simon Says and Grass/Snow), and a receptive vocabulary task (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test). Results showed that false belief bias on the Sandbox task correlated negatively with age and with the Change of Location task but not with the other false belief or inhibition tasks after controlling for age and receptive vocabulary. The Sandbox task shows promise as an age-sensitive measure of false belief performance during early childhood and shows convergent and discriminant validity.

Appendicitis in paraumbilical hernia mimicking strangulation: a case report and review of the literature

The contents of umbilical or paraumbilical herniae are usually omentum or bowel; rarely, metastatic deposits, appendix epiploicae, or an inflamed vermiform appendix may be found. Unexpected contents cause confusion in the diagnosis, especially when inflamed, and may mimic a strangulated umbilical hernia. Appendicitis in the hernial sac is known in inguinal and femoral herniae; however, only four reported cases of appendicitis within an umbilical hernia could be identified. A 54-year-old female presented to the emergency with a 2-day history of vomiting, severe pain and irreducibility of a paraumbilical swelling. On examination, we found tachycardia, with a tender, erythematous and irreducible paraumbilical swelling. With a diagnosis of strangulated paraumbilical hernia, the abdomen was explored through an infraumbilical incision. Opening the sac revealed inflammatory fluid, omentum, and an inflamed and edematous appendix. Appendicectomy was performed with anatomical double-breasted repair of the fascial defect. Histopathological examination of the specimen revealed acute appendicitis, periappendicitis and panniculitis in the omentum. Appendiceal inflammation inside a hernia sac is probably due to extrinsic compression and partial ischemia. Symptoms manifest late, and the final diagnosis is mostly made during the operation. CT scan provides only indirect clues to diagnosis. Appendicectomy and anatomical repair is the appropriate treatment for appendicitis within a paraumbilical hernia.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Genocide

AbstractThis article analyzes the claim that “deliberate denial [of genocide] is a form of aggression that ought to be regarded as a contribution to genocidal violence in its own right.” Its objective is to demonstrate that the claim is substantially correct: there are instances of genocide negation that are genocidal acts. The article suggests that one such instance is contained in a letter sent to Professor Robert Jay Lifton by Turkey's ambassador to the United States. The article is divided into three parts. In the first part, it delineates and discusses the unexpected contents of the letter to Lifton. In the second, it primarily deals with three topics: lying, genocide, and Austinian performatives. In the third part, it takes the points made in the second part and applies them to the contents of the letter to Lifton, and demonstrates that the letter is an instance of genocide negation that is genocidal.

Language and Theory of Mind in Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Relationship Between Complement Syntax and False Belief Task Performance

This study aimed to test the hypothesis that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) use their knowledge of complement syntax as a means of "hacking out" solutions to false belief tasks, despite lacking a representational theory of mind (ToM). Participants completed a "memory for complements" task, a measure of receptive vocabulary, and traditional location change and unexpected contents false belief tasks. Consistent with predictions, the correlation between complement syntax score and location change task performance was significantly stronger within the ASD group than within the comparison group. However, contrary to predictions, complement syntax score was not significantly correlated with unexpected contents task performance within either group. Possible explanations for this pattern of results are considered.

What Did I Say? Versus What Did I Think? Attributing False Beliefs to Self Amongst Children With and Without Autism

The task used most widely to assess recognition of false belief in self and others is the 'Smarties' unexpected contents task. Amongst individuals with and without autism, the Self and Other-person test questions of this task are of an equivalent level of difficulty. However, a potential confound with this task may allow the Self test question to be passed without false belief competence. Three groups of participants (with autism, developmental disability and typical development) undertook a new unexpected contents task which did not suffer from this confound. The main finding was that participants with autism performed significantly less well on the Self test question than the Other-person test question on this new task. Individuals with autism may have greater difficulty representing their own beliefs than the beliefs of other people.

Can only intelligent children do mind reading: The relationship between intelligence and theory of mind in 8 to 11 years old

BackgroundThe mind reading ability of children has evoked wide interest, but its relationship with general cognitive abilities remains obscure.MethodsWe studied the relationship between the mind reading ability and general intelligence. Children (N = 105) between 8 to 11 years from educational institutions were assessed for the mind reading ability using Picture Sequencing Task and Unexpected Contents Theory of Mind task. We used Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire to rule out psychiatric morbidity. An independent investigator quantified intelligence and adaptive behavior with Binet- Kamat Test of intelligence and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale respectively. We employed bivariate and multivariate statistical tests.ResultsWe demonstrated that mind reading ability was not significantly related to general intelligence or its domains except for the social intelligence after controlling the confounders methodologically and statistically.ConclusionThese findings argue that mind reading skill exists as an independent cognitive domain and has clinical, research as well as educational implications.

Irreducible inguinal hernia with appendices epiploicae in the sac

Inguinal hernia has a nature to surprise surgeons with its unexpected contents. Appendix epiploicae alone in the hernial sac is a rare entity and that too if hypertrophied and presenting as irreducible hernia is still more uncommon. We report a 52-year-old male with complains of irreducible inguinal mass with little pain on Left side for seven days. A diagnosis of irreducible inguinal hernia was made and the patient was treated laparoscopically by Trans-Abdominal Pre-Peritoneal Mesh Hernioplasty (TAPP). As a surprise, content of the hernial sac was enlarged / hypertrophied appendix epiploicae of sigmoid colon with appendigitis. Patient also had and incidental hernia on the other side, which was repaired in the same sitting. Postoperative recovery of the patient was excellent.

False belief understanding: The influence of person, grammatical mood, counterfactual reasoning and working memory

The present study had two major goals. The first goal was to assess the relative difficulty among different versions of the unexpected contents task by systematically varying the dimensions of grammatical mood (indicative vs. subjunctive) and person (self vs. other), and to examine the correlational pattern between these different versions of the unexpected contents task and the unexpected locations task. The second goal was to examine the specificity of the relation between false belief understanding and counterfactual reasoning after controlling for age and working memory ability. One hundred, 3‐ to 6‐year‐old, children were administered two measures of false belief understanding (two versions of the unexpected contents task and two versions of the unexpected locations task), two measures of counterfactual reasoning and a working memory measure. Results showed that performance on the unexpected contents task did not significantly differ across conditions. However, only the conditions of the unexpected contents task that concerned another person's false belief correlated significantly with the unexpected locations task. Moreover, counterfactual reasoning was found to explain a significant amount of variance in the unexpected locations task, even after controlling for age and working memory performance. Findings are discussed in the context of different accounts of the development of theory of mind, and in the context of different interpretations of the relation between false belief understanding and counterfactual reasoning.

False belief understanding in Cantonese-speaking children

The present study investigates the performance of 96 Cantonese-speaking three- to five-year-old preschoolers on three false belief tasks - a deceptive object, a change of location, and an unexpected contents task encompassing a variety of task factors. Most importantly, the research examines the possibility that false belief performance depends on specific linguistic factors such as the type of verb used in the test question--an explicitly false vs. a neutral belief verb. Cantonese was chosen as particularly useful for examining this question because it explicitly codes belief status as either neutral (nam5) or false (ji5wai4), and because it offers additional linguistic and cultural contrasts to research conducted on false belief with children learning English and other Indo-European languages. As expected, a strong age effect was found, as well as a significant advantage for children who received the explicit false belief (ji5wai4) wording and for those who were asked to explain rather than predict the protagonist's actions. Interestingly, there was also a strong task difference with children performing better on the deceptive object task than on the other two false belief tasks. We argue that these results point both to universal trajectories in theory of mind development and to interesting, but localized, effects of language and culture on children's false belief understanding.

Children's understanding of false beliefs in different domains: Affective vs. physical

This study compared the development of other false belief and representational change knowledge in the affective and physical domains. Pre‐school children (ages 3–4 years) participated in unexpected contents types of physical tasks and similar affective tasks. There were no domain differences in the children's performance; however, a marginal interaction with age was noted with older children performing better on the physical tasks than younger ones, but no age difference was found for the affective tasks. Children's knowledge of other false belief and representational change was also similar. Controlling for age, partial correlations between the representational change and other false belief questions were significant in the affective and physical domains. Partial correlations investigating the relationships across domains indicated a significant relationship for representational change, but not for other false belief. These results suggest that other false belief knowledge and representational change knowledge develop concurrently in the affective and physical domains.

The DX center and other tin-related defects in AlGaAs semiconductors

AlxGa1-xAs semiconductors doped with both natural and enriched119Sn have been studied by Mossbauer spectroscopy (MS) to help to determine the atomic-scale nature of a deleterious, deep-level defect known as the DX center. Spectra have been acquired in the dark at 76 K and under sub-bandgap illumination at 4 or 10 K to distinguish the DX center from the substitutional shallow donor defect. Although electrical differences are clearly detected in these two states, no difference in the Mossbauer spectra are observed. Unexpected high Sn contents, determined by quantitative MS, demonstrate a large non-electrically active Sn fraction in some samples and this may be obscuring the observation of the DX center by both X-ray absorption spectroscopy and MS. Grinding the single-crystal layers into fine powders leads to an Sn defect that is attributed to a surface-oxidized site.

Three-Year-Olds' Problems with False Belief: Conceptual Deficit or Linguistic Artifact?

Researchers are divided over whether young children understand other people's minds. This study reexamines the main technique used to show a basic inability in 3-year-olds to make judgments about a person's thoughts when that person's knowledge happens to be false. 131 children, aged 3, 3 1/2, and 4, were shown the real, unexpected contents of a chocolate box and were required to say what a friend would think was in it and what their own previous expectations had been. Success in this task was compared between the 3 age groups and also according to the specificity of questions asked. It was found, in contrast to previous findings, that test questions that are temporally specific and syntactically straightforward enable most 3-year-olds to attribute false beliefs to others. These results suggest that 3-year-olds' access to information about others' mental states is bounded by the linguistic demands placed upon them, but long before their fourth birthday children have some understanding of others' mind.

Thermal degradation of some cross-linked copolymers of vinyl acetate

Pyrolysis in combination with gas chromatography and thermogravimetry were used to study the thermal degradation of some cross-linked copolymers of vinyl acetate with divinylbenzene and ethylstyrene. The temperature was varied in the range 200° and 800°. The thermal decomposition products of the analyzed copolymers vary greatly, both with the temperature and with the composition of the samples. The experimental data obtained led to the assumption of a complex degradation mechanism, evidenced by the overlapping processes and the unexpected contents of certain evolved compounds as a function of composition.