Theory of mind - Smarties task and Sally-Anne Task

children at play with one of their favorite activities the water provides plenty of opportunities for learning and fun as they grow up and take part in activities like these one of the things that children need to be able to do is represent internally the complexity of their social worlds this involves not just being able to predict how the world of objects works but also how other people are likely to react in various situations psychologists have recently realized that in order to do this the young child needs an idea about how people's minds work what they have begun to call a theory of mind and research over the last decade has suggested how this seems to appear quite rapidly and suddenly between the ages of three and four years the uh great thing about theory of mind is that uh it uh it is a major conceptual tool that allows us to step outside of the bounds of the directly perceivable stimulous circumstances and allow for predicting and explaining other people's uh Behavior Uh in a wide variety of Novel ways psychologists argue that we can see the difference between having and not having a theory of Mind in simple experiments called false belief tasks first of all the child has to establish the fact that their own belief is false then they have to put themselves Inside the Mind of another child in order to predict that child's beliefs now Elizabeth what do you think's inside this box have a look inside can't take the oh well let me have a go shall I you ready say go go what's in there what's that pencils oh right should we put them back in the Box yeah what what they we put the lid on now can you remember what's inside the Box pencil and what did you think was in the boxc did you I'm going to show this box to Jay in a minute what will Jay think is in the Box pencils I think good after you've mopped up the child's tears because they expected to get sweets you uh asked them two questions one is a reality question to make sure that they remember what's inside so what's inside the what is inside the box and then you can ask them one of two false belief questions one is about their own previous belief what did you think was inside the box and the second question is your friend John is going to come and look at the Box in a minute what will John think is in the Box you like that like many children of this age when asked what another child will think Elizabeth simply projects what she now believes herself about the tube of Sweets she 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 right now she is this is Sally and this is an all right now Sally comes in with her marble Sally puts her marble in to the basket and goes out and comes and gets the marble and she puts the marble in the Box Here Comes Sally here come Sally now where will Sally look for the marble there you go Sally you got it for her hooray but for another child Connor the outcome is somewhat different Sally comes in to find her marble where will Sally look for her marble and where was the marble in the beginning that's it good should we look for the marble now where where where did you say the marble is have a look that's it good the joy of this procedure is that you can ask two control questions to make sure they understand what the task is about you can ask them a memory question which is where was the object at the beginning and of course the answer to that is at location a and you can ask them a second reality question which is where is the object now which of course is location B to be able to work out where Sally will think the marble is Connor has to be able to simultaneously hold or in psychological terms mentally represent two distinct points of view in his mind in the research studies most three-year-olds seem unable to do this before the age of about four uh children do not use the other person's mental representations as independent entities they do not realize that that individuals can act upon misrepresentation this is Sally but most four-year-olds get the answers to these questions right but why what happens between the ages of three and four

Channel: Adam

Views: 410,999

Keywords:

Id: 41jSdOQQpv0

Length: 5min 55sec (355 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 11 2013