Incognito, Ergo Sum! The Nature/Nurture debate of Theory of Mind Development By Amanda Hachey

Theory of Mind: A definition Our understanding of the mental world and its mental states (desires, emotions, perceptions etc.) First encountered by Wellman (1979) but Premack & Woodruff (1978) were the first ones to use the term Theory or Mind (ToM) Normally achieved at 4 years old when children understand they can hold false beliefs The false belief stage in ToM is when a child recognizes that not everyone holds the same perceptions

The Sally Anne Task

The Major Players in the Debate Nature-the idea that you are born with some internal mechanism that effects behaviour Nurture-the idea that your experiences and interactions with the environment will influence your behaviour

Nature’s Say The Module Theory Created by Leslie (1987) ToM is an innate process with several specific assumptions: 1.The individual ToM is determined by specialized mechanisms that hold different representations from any others 2.ToM has genetic endowments for basic belief concepts which will be triggered by the appropriate environmental factors 3.Not all ToM is modular, but is has an innate basis

The actual workings of The Modular Approach: 1) ToMM-Theory of Mind Mechanism The mechanism that spontaneously processes attended behaviours; ToMM will automatically answer with a best-guess answer, which is typically the answer the child assumes to be true 2)SP-the Selection Process An executive process inhibiting the salient, best guess response The SP is necessary for false belief tasks, because they need to inhibit the salient response of the child answering from their perspective

Twin Studies Hughes & Cutting (1999) wanted to see if there was a direct hereditability of such an innate mechanism Used the Classic Twin Study with identical twins, fraternal twins and normal siblings Found that Identical Twins scored significantly similar compared to the fraternal twins and siblings, which would suggest a strong genetic undertow However, when the researchers attempted to repeat their findings in 2005, they found that they were unable to find supporting results They attributed the individual differences of ToM to non-shared environment, which is the events and relationships which are unique to a single child

Autistic Children A highly heritable disorder with a concordance rate of 60% Autistic Children have trouble perceiving how others think or feel; they assume everyone functions from their perspective Their social deficits are seen to have a highly genetic component They show very little/no interest in pretend play, because they cannot grasp the concept of believing you are something you really aren’t

First Tested in classic study of Baron- Cohen et al.(1985), where autistic children were unable pass the false-belief task because they were unable to see from another’s perspective Another study by Surian & Leslie (1999) looked at comparing normal 3 year olds to autistic children Used explicit (Look First) questions Found that 3 year old children were able to answer this question, while autistic children couldn’t

This is believed to be due to the fact that autistic children are assumed to have an executive functioning deficit In the modular terms, they lack SP, which allows them to inhibit the more salient ToMM

X-linked disorders Turner’s Syndrome-a genetic disorder involving partial or complete deletion of one of the X chromosomes in females While they have normal intelligence, social adjustment and language problems are extremely common Will not succeed on the false belief task, similar to autistic children Lack of flexibility and responsiveness to social interactions

Skuse et al. (1997) looked for the genetic reasons of these occurrences Found that girls who had retained the X chromosome from their mother had more learning and social difficulties than the girls who had retained their father’s X chromosome Demonstrated low scores on false belief tests This can actually be seen in boys, as they inherited their X chromosome from their mother as well This parallels with autism, as males are more likely to develop autism than girls are Turner’s Syndrome girls are more at risk for language and social disorders than males are though

Nurture’s Say The nurture side of the debate is the environmental theory that children’s cognitive abilities are due to their exploration and interaction with the environment Social relationships serve to strengthen a developing ToM and the young individuals experience will shape such cognitive abilities

Family sizes Any children who have 2 siblings compared to children who have none will have an advantage in ToM development. This has been linked with increased linguistic ability and chances at practicing abstract thought (pretend play) Study of Jenkins & Astington(1996) looked at if children from larger families would acquire ToM more quickly than other children They found that children from larger families grasped false beliefs before other children from smaller families Ironic, because large families have been shown to correlate negatively with intelligence

Siblings Children will use their older siblings as a social model, which is very beneficial for ToM development Children are also much more likely to ask their older siblings for help, and in return, older siblings will teach them how to think abstractly (playing pretend) because they have superior metacognitive skills

Younger siblings can act as pupils, where the child will practice vocalizing their new cognitive skills in explaining things to the younger children Also, parents can help with younger siblings, where they will act as mediator to help the cognitive conversation (ex-he didn’t see that) Ruffman et al.(1998) actually conducted a study to see which siblings would be more beneficial to a developing ToM Found that older siblings would be significantly more helpful to develop a ToM

Cross Cultural Studies Ruffman et al. (1998) looked at the Japanese Culture if there was a difference in ToM development Japanese people put a strong emphasis of group work and conformity, which encourage their children to participate in social activities much early than other children in other cultures and therefore they would be more likely to develop an earlier ToM However, they are also strongly discouraged from asking direct questions to other people, as it is taken as a sign of weakness. This could hinder their exploration of their ToM development. The results showed that despite the strong disapproval of asking for help, Japanese children would still seek out help from those they felt they could get help from and demonstrated a regular ToM

A study by Vinden (1996) was done on Junin Quechua children from Peru Their culture is an oral one, with almost no literal members They also don’t have proper terms for mentalistic thoughts (belief, thought, denial), though they had a lot of descriptive terminology. This was used in questioning whether or not the Junin Quechua children would still develop a normal ToM They found that the children did show a fully function theory of mind, but that it was developed in a different order than westernized children Rather than developing false-belief realization first, they achieved appearance-reality first, another facet of ToM which details knowing that things aren’t always as they appear

Language and ToM Language, linguistic ability and verbal ability have been listed in almost all of the studies as being a significant factor in the development of ToM Flavell (2004) “People convey information about their own, the child’s or other people’s mental states through conversation and stories, verbally making salient people’s perspectives, and help the child see how mental states are caused and changed by verbal and other outputs.” Language is neither firmly for or against either sides of the debates, but is strongly present in both

In the modular debate, language serves as a prerequisite, where linguistic ability is one of the triggers to start ToM development In all the genetic disorders, language is shown to be useful in their attempts at a ToM (autistic children will use language to reason with false- belief tasks (Astington & Baird, 2005, p ) In the environmental argument, communication provides an important support for ToM, as does the quality of communication (rich in cognitive topics) Communication between a ToM developing child and another individual helps the child understand that the relationship is two fold, that the listener is interested in different things than the speaker (pragmatics) (Astington & Baird, 2005, p )

A study done by Woolfe et al.(2002) looked at deaf children and their ToM’s. According to the modular theory, they lack the environmental cue (hearing and producing speech) that would trigger the SP function They are also less able to explore and experience their environment, which makes them less able to achieve ToM Looked at native-signing children over later signing children and found than when children had been signing since birth, they would perform significantly better on the false-belief tasks that those later-signing children Also, if the children had signing parents who could communicate with the children, they would perform significantly higher that those children with non-communicative parents

Graduate Programs Chris Lalonde-developing theories of Mind, children’s understanding of knowledge and social skills University of Victoria-Cognitive Program -Life Span Development Program (PhD) Janet Astington-ToM and language University of Toronto-Developmental Program (MA or PhD) Jeremy Carpendale-social cognitive and moral development in children Simon Fraser University-Developmental Program (MA or PhD)

References Astington, J.W. & Baird, J.A.(Eds.).(2005) Why Language Matters for Theory of Mind. Oxford: Oxford Press Bailey, A., Palferman, S., Harvey, L. & Le Couteur, A.(1998). Autism: The Phenotype in Relatives. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 28(5), Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A.M. & Firth, U.(1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”. Cognition 21, Flavell, J.H.(2004). Theory-of-Mind Development: Retrospect and Prospect. Merrill-Palmer Quaterly, 50(3),

Hughes, C., Jaffee, S.R., Happé, F., Taylor, A., Caspi, A. & Moffitt, T.E.(2005). Origins of Individual Difference in Theory of Mind:From Nature to Nurture? Child Development, 76, Hughes, C. & Cutting, A.L.(1999). Nature, Nurture, and Individual Differences in early understanding of mind. Psychological Science 10(5), Jenkins, M.J. & Astington, J.W.(1996). Cognitive Factors and Family Structure Associated with Theory of Mind Development in Young Children. Developmental Psychology, 32(1),

Leslie, A.M., Friedman, O. & German, T.P.(2004). Core Mechanisms in ‘theory of mind’. TRENDS in Cognitive Science, 8(12), Ruffman, T., Perner, J., Naito, M., Parkin, L. & Clements, W.A.(1998). Older (but Not Younger) sibling facilitate false belief understanding. Development Psychology, 34(1), Skuse, D.H., James, R.S., Bishop, D.V.M., Coppin, B., Dalton, P., Aamodt-Leeper, G., Bacarese- Hamilton, M., Creswell, C., McGurk, R. & Jacobs, P.A.(1997). Evidence from Turner’s syndrome of an imprinted X-link locus affecting cognitive function. Nature, 387,

Surian, L. & Leslie, A.M.(1999). Competence and performance in false belief understanding: A comparison of autistic and normal 3-year-old children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 17, Vinden, P.G.(1996), Junin Quechua Children’s Understanding of Mind. Child Development 67, Woolfe, T., Want, S.C. & Siegal, M.(2002). Signpost to Development: Theory of Mind in Deaf Children. Children Development, 73(3),