Theory of mind - Smarties task and Sally-Anne Task

Theory of Mind: Understanding Others' Beliefs and Intentions

• Children develop a theory of mind to represent the complexities of their social worlds.

• This involves understanding not just how objects work, but also how people are likely to react in various situations.

• A theory of mind allows us to predict and explain other people's behavior in novel ways.

"The great thing about theory of mind is that it is a major conceptual tool that allows us to step outside of the bounds of the directly perceivable stimulus circumstances and allow for predicting and explaining other people's behavior in a wide variety of novel ways."

False Belief Tasks: Assessing Theory of Mind

• Psychologists use false belief tasks to assess whether children have a theory of mind.

• In these tasks, children need to recognize that their own beliefs can be different from the beliefs of others.

• One common task involves asking children about their own beliefs and then predicting the beliefs of another child.

"The child has to establish the fact that their own belief is false, and then they have to put themselves inside the mind of another child in order to predict that child's beliefs."

Smarties Task: Testing False Belief Understanding

• The Smarties task involves asking a child about the contents of a box after the contents have been changed.

• The child is then asked to predict what another child would believe about the box's contents.

• Children who can understand false beliefs will give the correct answer, while those who do not have a theory of mind may project their own beliefs onto others.

"The child doesn't recognize that the other child exists as an independent thinking being and, presented with another task of this kind, she acts in much the same way."

Sally-Anne Task: Assessing Perspective Taking

• The Sally-Anne task involves two dolls, Sally and Anne, and a marble.

• Sally puts the marble in a basket and then leaves the room.

• Anne moves the marble from the basket to a box.

• When Sally returns, children are asked where Sally will look for the marble.

"To be able to work out where Sally will think the marble is, Connor has to be able to simultaneously hold or mentally represent two distinct points of view in his mind."

"Most three-year-olds seem unable to do this before the age of about four."