1. Interconnected network of mental states (Astington)
Ali believed that his son was not telling the truth about the broken cup.
When Onur woke up, he realized that he had just dreamed about a ghost and that it wasn’t real.
Steve thought that Sasha was sad because he did not get the red bicycle he wanted for Christmas.
Although Jenny really enjoyed the chocolate pudding, but she didn’t share any with her sister because Gwen’s favorite flavor is strawberry.
All of the above require knowing something about how beliefs, dreams, desires, and tastes work.

2. Child’s theory of mind
Piaget: children under the age of 7 cannot distinguish clearly between the properties of mental events and physical events
cannot engage in belief/desire reasoning
ascribe animate properties (e.g., intentions) to inanimate objects
clouds move because they want to
More recent developmental work: preschool children start to employ some sort of belief/desire reasoning, but there are some limitations

3. Belief-desire reasoning
Perception
see, hear, smell
touch, feel
Belief
believe, suppose
know, expect
doubt, suspect
Action
hit, grab
accept
search
Basic Emotions/Physiology
love, like, enjoy
hate, dislike, fear
hunger, thirst
Desire
want, desire
wish, hope
ought, should
A scheme for depicting belief-desire psychological reasoning
(adapted from Bartsch & Wellman, 1995)

4. Understanding Mental States in Infancy: Flavell, etc.
Infants respond to social stimuli in early infancy
Cry, smile, attend to faces, become attached to people
Attend preferentially to Human Speech rather than other sounds
Can imitate human facial movements: e.g., tongue protrusion (Meltzoff)
From 9 to 12 Months: can begin to attribute intentionality to others (aboutness)
Referential Pointing: showing an object to get others to attend to it
Relation between perception and action
Social Referencing: Attending to other’s emotional expressions.
Toy and Mom Experiments: can use the mother’s facial and vocal reaction to appraise an ambiguous toy
Rich vs. lean interpretations

5. False beliefs
the idea that some representations of the world are not veridical, true representations
I might be believing that it is raining outside right now although it is now
Premack and Woodruff (1978): mind-reading ability in humans allows representation of false beliefs
I saw someone removing the contents of a box
You were not around when this event took place although you were aware of the original contents of the box
When you come back, you will have a false belief about the contents of the box

6. Representing False beliefs
requires setting one’s own beliefs aside in order to represent the false belief of the other
Initially theory is nonrepresentational
Behave as if there is a simple and reliable causal link between the real state of affairs in the world and our mental states about it
Beliefs are not representations, but approximations of truth
it is actors’ potentially mistaken conceptions of what the world is like, rather than the world directly, that determine their plans and acts
Distinction between propositional attitudes and propositional contents
something may be F, but I may sincerely believe it is T

7. False Belief Tasks
Candy/Pencils Task: Box of candies that contains pencils
Asked to predict what it contains, will say candy.
Shown the pencils inside
Asked to predict, what someone else will say.
3-year-old will suggest pencils
4-year-Old child correctly predicts candy
3-year-old wrongly predicts:
What others will say, for children, adults, puppets, and hypothetical story characters
Even counter-evidence doesn’t change their answer
White Cup/Blue Cup
Sees Blue Cup placed behind a screen
Adult comes into the room and says he can’t see the cup, but he thinks it’s white.
3-year -old predicts that the adult believes the cup is blue

8. Pretense as the origin of ToM
Leslie: children around 18 months to 2 years do a great deal of pretend play
use a book as an animal
treat wooden blocks as edible objects
pretend sleep
pretending that this is X
attribute deviant properties to objects
inventing imaginary objects
Pretense representations are meta-representations: separating the phone’s real identity from its pretend-identity (banana)
Pretending than and believing that are both propositional attitudes (explained by the modular mechanism ToMM2)
but 2 year gap btw comprehension of pretense and false belief

9. 2-year-old ToM Repacholi: raw fish vs. gold-fish
experimenter did either a yummy face or a yucky face and ask ¨can you give me some?
14 months old: gave her the gold fish. Whatever they want is what other people want!
18 months old: gave experimenter the food that she showed a positive reaction to
Attributions are based around notions of Desire and Not Belief! (Desire based ToM)
Treat desire and perception as Simple and direct causal relations
If an agent desires X and sees that X exists, he will do things to get X
If Tim wants a cookie, and sees that there is one in the cookie jar, he will get it.

10. The 3 year Old Cognitive Theorist
Elaborate Mental Ontology (as evidenced in terms):
Think, Know, Remember, Pretend, Dream
Understand Causal Organization of Emotions
Some things make people happy, sad or angry
Begin to develop a More General Notion of Belief
Initially Theory is Nonrepresentational
Behave as if there is a simple and reliable causal link between the real state of affairs in the world and our mental states about it.
Beliefs are not representations, but approximations of truth.
Fail “False Belief Task”

11. Age 4 to 5: The Fully Formed Cognitive Theorist
4 or 5 children have a well developed and coherent theory of Naïve Psychology
Mental states have a representational character, change over time, and differ among people with different experiences
Pass false belief tasks
Reason Forward from Beliefs to Predict Action
He believes it might rain so he took his umbrella
Reason Backwards
“Why is Jane looking under the piano for her kitten?”
Appeal to beliefs: She thought it was there
Appeal to desires: She wanted her kitty
desire-based reasoning also present in younger children

12. The Case of Autism: Mindblindness:
Simon Baron-Cohen (1995)
Abnormalities in social Development, communication development, and in pretend play may be due to failure in the development of mindreading.
Autistic Children and Adults
Understand desires and intentions to some extent
Impaired Joint Attention Mechanism
Can’t verify that self and other are attending to the same object via any modality (visual, auditory, tactile): no social referencing
Pointing behavior to direct visual attention is absent.
Genuine inability to understand other people’s different beliefs.
Fail False Belief Task
Inferior Performance compared to normal 3-year-olds