Explain the concept of Theory of Mind. Describe different approaches to Theory of Mind and what they suggest about the way we understand others

Theory of Mind

  • The way we understand ourselves, others and the world and everything in it
  • Metacognition – introspecting about what we are thinking or feeling
  • Mindreading – trying to work out what other people are thinking
  • Young children do not have the conception of the mind

Theory Theory

  • Informal theories about the way things work
  • Must specify a set of entities or processes that are found in its domain of application and not in others (modularity)
  • Must use causal principles that are likewise unique to the theory’s domain
  • Body of knowledge must comprise a system of interrelated concepts and beliefs, rather than a collection of unrelated contents
  • Schemas

Modularity Theory

  • Young children do not acquire a theory about mental representations
  • Acquire 3 domain-specific and modular mechanisms for dealing with agents versus nonagent objects
  • Theory of body mechanisms – first year, babies recognize that agents have an internal source of energy that allows them to move on their own
  • Theory of mind mechanisms
  • Late first year, infant construes people and other agents as part of the environment and as pursuing goals
  • Second year, child can represent agents as holding attitudes and propositions

Simulation Theory

 Children become aware of their own mental states and use this awareness to infer the mental states of other people

General Constraints

  • Some theory of mind limitations might be due to general mechanisms

Describe the idea of a “Cheater Detection” module and discuss why it is might be important

  • Groups of co-operators must recognize cheaters otherwise, the co-operators would in effect be subsidizing cheaters at a cost to themselves
  • If individuals always cheated they would not survive an invasion of cooperators that could reliably discriminate cheaters, because cheaters would always be denied the resources that cooperators obtained (and hence die out)
  • If there was full cooperation, it would mean an invasion from cheaters would be too easy. Hence the cheaters would succeed and cooperators would die out

Describe the Wason Card Sorting task. Discuss, with examples, the effect of context and content on performance in this task

Wason (1966) Card Sorting Task – Deductive Reasoning

  • If an item has property P, then it has property Q
  • If there is a vowel on one side of the card, then there is an odd number on the other
  • 4 double-sided cards are placed on a table so that subjects can see only one side of each card
  • The experimenter gets subjects to indicate which of the cards must be turned over to find out whether the rule is true or false