An Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition) - Chapter 11

Intuitive psychology refers to the awareness some people have regarding others’ motives and beliefs. The unexpected transfer test is the classic false-belief test. The false belief test helps us differentiate between those who do and those who do not understand that minds hold beliefs.

Children below the age of 7 are egocentric, according to Piaget. A conceptual shift is a large qualitative change in an individual’s cognitive processes. Representational ability is the ability to form a mental representation of an event or an object. Metacognition refers to knowledge of one’s state of mind, reflective access to one’s cognitive abilities, thinking about how one is feeling or thinking. The deceptive box task shows false beliefs in young children, as well as difficulties with accessing one’s own beliefs. Children who were unable to acknowledge another person’s false belief were not even attuned to their own prior beliefs. If children do not know their own mind, they cannot know anything about another mind. Children around the age of 4 sometimes answer correctly on the false belief test.

There is evidence for a gradual change between not passing the false belief test and passing the test. The false belief test is incapable of detecting degrees of performance that fall between passing and failing the test. This test makes it appear as if the theory of mind development occurred in stages. There are instances of children passing one false belief test and failing another. The number of false belief tests a child is likely to pass increases gradually with age. There is a difference between performance limitations and competence. Performance refers to limitations that are associated with the challenges presented by the task being asked. Competence refers to the child’s underlying ability which is often not reflected in their performance on tasks. The time it took children to reply to the question of false beliefs compared to the time it took them to answer questions about the current state of reality shows the processing required to answer these questions and that the task not always reflects competence. The wording of a question is of influence with the performance on the false belief task.

Research has shown that children as young as 15 months showed signs of understanding false belief in a preferential looking procedure involving a violation of expectation. A child’s competence can often be underestimated by measures of their performance.

The hindsight bias refers to the inclination to see events that have already happened as being more predictable than they were before they took place. Adults have difficulties with false belief tests as well. They are heavily influenced by the information provided, even if this information is only available to them. Adults sometimes have difficulties with perspective-taking and there is a possibility that people do not automatically attune to other people’s beliefs.

Age is a major influence, as well as a social experience, although age is more important. There are subtle differences in how people understand others’ minds between cultures. People from collectivistic cultures were more likely to think that the statement of another person was true than people from individualistic cultures.

Modularity is the view that we have separate modules for different abilities. Fodor proposes a modularity view that we are born with a module for understanding minds and that this module is active from the very beginning of life. It undergoes refinement at about the age of 4. Leslie and Thaiss argued that children with autism lack the brain module needed for making judgements about beliefs. As long as children were able to acknowledge a counterfactual state, they had no problems with the false belief test.

The number of siblings can be a positive influence on the development of a theory of mind because the child will learn (in the hard way) about other minds, but it can also have a negative influence on the development of a theory of mind because the adult might have less time to tutor the child about other minds. Children are better at the false-belief test if they have older siblings, not if they have younger siblings.

Children with parents that give explanations of behaviour with reference to psychological state tend to pass the false belief test sooner than children that did not receive this explanation. The social environment influences the development of the child to acknowledge beliefs. The characteristics of the child are also important.

Autism is characterised as a triad of impairments. Wing’s triad of impairments consists of social relationships, communication and imagination. A child with autism has a lack of imagination and this is notable in pretend play. Underdevelopment in socialisation and communication also point to an underlying deficiency in understanding other minds. Social skill depends on being able to diagnose other people’s sensitivities, attitudes and knowledge. Children with autism lack this skill and this could be because of their difficulty understanding other minds. Autism could be caused by genetics, a virus or from accidental injury.

Many individuals with autism have learning disabilities and this alone could account for their difficulty acknowledging false belief. If this is true, then children with Down’s syndrome would also have problems with the false belief test, but they don’t.

The ability to ‘read’ another person’s mind has at least two benefits: it allows us to offer the right type of help and support appropriate and it gives us a better understanding about what caused that psychological state of mind. Being able to read other people’s minds has valuable practical benefits and not being able to do so is a serious disadvantage.