Harris (1989) suggests that when children manage to differentiate between reality and pretence, realising that other people are not just an extension of the child’s only desires, this is when children will not confuse the mental states of others with their own. It is not until the fourth year that children can imagine another person’s feelings and views even thought they are not the child’s own (Harris, 1989).
Durkin (1985) developed this path to a theory of mind and knowledge of others and argues that it involves distinguishing people from other things, discovering the characteristics of individuals, and finally learning that others have an independent psychological existence (a theory of mind).
Unlike adults, infants have much less experience in distinguishing between people and other things. Piaget (1936) argued that children only became concerned with people and their differences from other people at the end of the first year. However, many have argued that infants are interested in people from birth. People provide the most interesting stimulus. They have vivid facial expressions and sound producing devices, and provide food.
However, this does not mean that infants are aware of people’s internal properties, such as feelings. Experiments by Richards (1974) show infants to be more responsive to a mother, adjusting their facial behaviour and looks, than to an inanimate object which was moving. This appears valid only when mothers interact with the child, as Tronick et al’s (1978) experiments show, when a child does not “know” they are interacting with a person because they are not responsive and inanimate, the child clearly shows signs of distress and smiles less.
An experiment by Feldman and Ruble (1981) suggests that children of a young age, although commenting less on the internal states of others that older children or adults, do make character assessments and attribute feelings to other children if a social motivational variable is introduced. That is, when they anticipate future interaction with the other child. Once children begin to appreciate other’s character, they can see that it may be different from their own, shown, for example, in their expression of dislike for another child, and this is culminated in the acquisition of a theory of mind as they understand that other’s may hold views different from their own. However, at this juncture, it is important to note that the attainment of a theory of mind is not immediate, and just as gradually as children develop understanding of others in stages, their theory of mind is developed throughout their childhood. Selman (1980) argues that it is not until 8 or 10 years old that a child can properly put themselves in a person’s place to really understand their intentions (which conflict with their own).
Schaffer (1996) puts forward the argument that because children display empathy they are therefore not entirely egocentric until they acquire a theory of mind. Hoffman (1988) explains empathy as a four stage process, showing a developing precursor to children managing to attribute internal states to others. The first level is global empathy whereby in the first year, children may replicate the emotion they witness, such as crying when another child is crying, however, Hoffman (1988) argues that the emotion is “involuntary and undifferentiated”. The second level is egocentric empathy when children offer help to those in distress, help which they would find comforting themselves. Third is empathy for another’s feelings; children have developed role-taking skills initiated by make believe play, as argued by Harris and are more aware that other people can have different feelings that the child’s own. Therefore their responses to distress are more suited to the other person’s needs. This is the final stage in the development of empathy. This coincides with the attainment of a theory of mind. Empathy for another’s life condition occurs by late childhood and they can appreciate that the person’s distress may stem from earlier experience and not just the immediate situation; and can also be found with respect to entire groups of people, the poor for example, enforcing this idea.
The research on empathy shows that, from a very early age, children do have a capacity for the appreciation of other people as thinking and feeling individuals. Studies by Bretherton and Beeghly (1982) show that children’s spontaneous talk about other people’s internal states leads to the same conclusion. From the third year children are more aware of other people’s emotions and can comment on their motivations. For example, the excerpt “you sad, Mummy. What Daddy do?” shows a child’s discussion of how his or another person’s state has been caused or changed. Examples such as this show that children cannot therefore be completely egocentric as they appear aware that another person may be experiencing feelings different from their own.
Theory of mind (TOM) is the intuitive ability we develop through early childhood to know that others have a different point of view to our own. No other species, as far as we know, can 'put itself in someone else's shoes' to see how they might be feeling to the same extent that we can. To take it a step further, from putting ourselves in the place of another we can predict certain courses of events. TOM is not just interpreting how another behaves but how they think, so for example one does not just understand that if someone puts their hand on an iron they will pull it away quickly afterwards, but that in touching it the other has felt pain from the heat of the iron and therefore has moved the hand so it is no longer touching the source of pain. If you see someone else getting too close to an iron it immediately runs through your head what might happen next: that is one example of TOM. Another might be that although someone is smiling the person they are talking to knows they are really trying to hide their true feelings. TOM enables the 'person' singular to share feelings with, and understand, others, and consequently become part of an interacting social group rather than just an individual (Wellman, 1990).
Humphrey suggests that 'A crucial aspect of society (is) the ability to understand or read the mind of another individual' (as cited in Miell, Phoenix and Thomas (2002), p125). Part of human evolution has been the emergence of society. Evolutionary psychology studies this as a differentiating factor to non-humans, and theory of mind can be seen as important to the establishment of society.
To take another example of the importance of TOM, Byrne and Whitten's Machiavellian hypothesis (Miell, Phoenix and Thomas, 2002) theorise that we reached our present level of creative intelligence through the adaptive nature of our deception, opportunism and 'cunning' cooperation. Paramount to this must be TOM. One cannot deceive by accident: by definition it is a purposeful and thought-through act. The same goes for cunning cooperation and social manipulation - the theory may not be based on TOM but its basis would not even be possible without TOM - in other words it does not contradict theory of mind but strengthens it.
Many researchers have argued that lack of TOM is the fundamental impairment at the root of autism. Studies using false belief tasks suggest that it might be so: in a controlled study comparing four year-old "normal" children with autistic children and Down syndrome children with a mental age of at least four, over eighty percent of the normal and Down children answered correctly, but only twenty percent of the autistic children did (Baron-Cohen et al, 1985). Other false belief tasks give similar results, but there are other impairments too. Lack of TOM would certainly explain the social withdrawal and communication disorders associated with autism, but this cannot be the whole story because not all autistic children fail the false belief tasks. Nor can it explain other symptoms like the need for sameness. More recently, Baron-Cohen (1995) has argued that the real root of autism might be the inability to follow another's gaze. Children were asked to sit in front of the researcher with four pieces of chocolate between them. When the researcher looked at one piece, the normal children could follow the gaze and knew which piece was being looked at. They also associated the look with desire, and would offer the piece to the researcher. Autistic children were deficient in both these respects. If a child is unable to tell what another person is looking at, they will never fully understand that they have a different view of the world. If they cannot associate this view with desire, they will never understand the motivations or intentions of others.
Autism shows clearly what the advantages of TOM are at the social level, and the importance of TOM to the discipline of evolutionary psychology seems to be paramount. A child’s awareness and understanding of the mind influences several aspects of human life. ToM can influence pragmatic language skills and participation in communicative interactions. Gray and Hosie (1996) described ToM as “mind reading”, while Schick, et al. (2002) relate ToM to our ability to perceive the emotions of others allowing us to respond appropriately. The ability to understand the relationship between action and mental states affects a child’s understanding of surprises, secrets, tricks, mistakes, and lies, as well as impacting a child’s ability to take perspective and infer (Schick et al., 2002). ToM can impact how we adopt the beliefs of a particular culture and how we recognize the meaning of words (Siegal and Varley, 2002). Research associates the importance of ToM in literacy development and a child’s understanding of stories (Gray and Hosie, 1996; Schick, et al., 2002). ToM significantly impacts our ability to communicate and function.
Wellman, Cross, and Watson (2001) identify a pattern in children with typical development: “The understanding of belief, and related, understanding of mind, exhibit genuine conceptual change in the preschool years” (p.655). Peterson and Slaughter (2003) noted that “…by the time they reach age 6, most normally developing children have acquired ToM, enabling at least a rudimentary understanding of their own and other people’s true, false and imaginary mental states” (p. 399-400). Evidence consistently notes the development of ToM (as measured by success with false belief tasks) in preschoolers with typical development at approximately 4 years of age. Patterns demonstrate the progression of understanding increasingly complex situations with action attributed to mental states (Gray and Hosie, 1996).
In conclusion, ToM does seem to be very important in many areas of the typical development of the child. Our sense of understanding of others is our most essential source for introducing meanings in a world of causes. A typically developing child’s ToM comprehends where facts come from, so that they can work out who knows what, and more importantly, who doesn’t know what. This is a crucial development simply because it supports proper communication, telling people what they don’t know, other than telling them what they already know (Grice, 1975/1957). It is also a basis for the understanding of deception, which depends on being able to work out what a person might know about. The ability to predict the behaviour of others is a crucial component of social skill development (Baron-Cohen et al. 1985).
By 4 years old, normally developing children can also pick out words from list that relate to what happens in the mind, or what it can do. These words comprise "think", "know", “dream”, “pretend”, “hope”, “wish”, and "imagine”. These are easily differentiated from other kinds of words like “jump”, “eat”, or “move”. Autistic children find it much harder to make this judgment (Baron-Cohen et al., 1994).
Children with no ToM may have difficulty understanding that their peers or classmates have thoughts and emotions, and may thus appear to be self-centred, eccentric, or uncaring and end up being someone who cannot interact with society. It is a vital part of growing up and without it, many things would continue to be a mystery for the child and learning and social interaction would become increasingly difficult.
Meltzoff (1999) sums it up perfectly when he says “People are more than physical bodies. We are more than dynamic bags of skin that can be seen, heard, and weighed. In the adult framework, persons also have beliefs, desires, and intentions that lie below the surface behaviour. One cannot directly see, taste, smell, or hear mental states, but it is an essential part of our ordinary adult understanding that other people have them. . . ” (p.257).
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