Hi Carol & Everyone,
At it's broadest, "Theory of Mind" ("ToM") is encompassed by "Naive
Psychology." According to the Theory-Theory perspective on
development, children are born with broad ways of categorizing
objects (into "ontological kinds") and they have different ways of
organizing information and responding to entities within each
domain. We have a naive physics for artifacts, like desks, and a
naive psychology for people. We explain people as moved by causes
like feelings, desires, beliefs, and hopes (i.e., mental states) and
we explain artifacts with causes like gravity. Aside from joking,
nobody would respond to the question, "Why did she fall down?" with
"gravity."
Different developmental psychologists suggest we start with a
different number of theories. They hypothesize different ways that
theories combine together. For example, is our naive biology (for
non-human animals) its own theory or does it come out of fusing naive
psychology with naive physics. Some developmental psychology
theorists whose research includes the topic are: Henry Wellman, Susan
Gelman, Alison Gopnik, John Flavell, and Frank Keil. Naive
psychology also includes a wider range of topics, like attributions
in social psychology (but "ToM" is a more popular term among
developmentalists).
In a more narrow sense, some researchers use the term "Theory of
Mind" as synonymous with "False-Belief Tasks." For example, a boy
Maxi puts a toy in a cabinet and goes outside to play. His mom moves
the toy to a basket elsewhere. When Maxi comes in, where will he go
to get the toy? At 3 years of age nearly all children will say the
basket because that's where the toy is. But by 5 years of age nearly
all children say the cabinet because that's where he put it (i.e.,
Maxi has a belief that he acts on even though that belief is false)
(e.g., Perner & Wimmer, 1983, Flavell, 2000). Tim mentioned Simon
Baron-Cohen. Baron-Cohen et al. (1995) suggest that those with
autism lack a ToM (as though its a missing module in the mind)
because they fail this task, and even fail this task when they have a
mental age above 5. In his original study, an IQ-matched sample of
those with downs syndrome and mental ages over 5 understood that
others could have false beliefs. Historically, ToM research is often
traced back to Premack and Woodruff's (1978) classic research on non-
human primate understanding of mental states. Chimpanzee Sarah
showed a remarkable awareness that her trainers had internal mental
states like having knowledge but lying about it. Hope this helps!
Kevin
http://www.DevPsy.org/
On Oct 17, 2008, at 7:44 PM, DeVolder Carol L wrote:
Can someone give me a concise definition of Theory of Mind? Please
feel free to suggest readings as well. I believe I understand the
premise, but I'd really like to know more, including where it
stands vis a vis child development and autism, and non-human
animals (other primates, for example).
Thanks,
Carol
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