Neural Correlates of Belief- and Desire-Reasoning

Theory of mind requires an understanding of both desires and beliefs. Moreover, children understand desires before beliefs. Little is known about the mechanisms underlying this developmental lag. Additionally, previous neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies have neglected the direct comparison of these developmentally critical mental-state concepts. Event-related brain potentials were recorded as participants ( N  =   24; mean age   =   22 years) reasoned about diverse-desires, diverse-beliefs, and parallel physical situations. A mid-frontal late slow wave (LSW) was associated with desire and belief judgments. A right-posterior LSW was only associated with belief judgments. These findings demonstrate neural overlap and critical differences in reasoning explicitly about desires and beliefs, and they suggest children recruit additional neural processes for belief judgments beyond a common, more general, mentalizing neural system.     

Perceptual Access Reasoning (PAR) in Developing a Representational Theory of Mind

An important part of children's social and cognitive development is their understanding that people are psychological beings with internal, mental states including desire, intention, perception, and belief. A full understanding of people as psychological beings requires a representational theory of mind (ToM), which is an understanding that mental states can faithfully represent reality, or misrepresent reality. For the last 35 years, researchers have relied on false-belief tasks as the gold standard to test children's understanding that beliefs can misrepresent reality. In false-belief tasks, children are asked to reason about the behavior of agents who have false beliefs about situations. Although a large body of evidence indicates that most children pass false-belief tasks by the end of the preschool years, the evidence we present in this monograph suggests that most children do not understand false beliefs or, surprisingly, even true beliefs until middle childhood. We argue that young children pass false-belief tasks without understanding false beliefs by using perceptual access reasoning (PAR). With PAR, children understand that seeing leads to knowing in the moment, but not that knowing also arises from thinking or persists as memory and belief after the situation changes. By the same token, PAR leads children to fail true-belief tasks. PAR theory can account for performance on other traditional tests of representational ToM and related tasks, and can account for the factors that have been found to correlate with or affect both true- and false-belief performance. The theory provides a new laboratory measure which we label the belief understanding scale (BUS). This scale can distinguish between a child who is operating with PAR versus a child who is understanding beliefs. This scale provides a method needed to allow the study of the development of representational ToM. In this monograph, we report the outcome of the tests that we have conducted of predictions generated by PAR theory. The findings demonstrated signature PAR limitations in reasoning about the mind during the ages when children are hypothesized to be using PAR. In Chapter II, secondary analyses of the published true-belief literature revealed that children failed several types of true-belief tasks. Chapters III through IX describe new empirical data collected across multiple studies between 2003 and 2014 from 580 children aged 4–7 years, as well as from a small sample of 14 adults. Participants were recruited from the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. All participants were native English-speakers. Children were recruited from university-sponsored and community preschools and daycare centers, and from hospital maternity wards. Adults were university students who participated to partially fulfill course requirements for research participation. Sociometric data were collected only in Chapter IX, and are fully reported there. In Chapter III, minor alterations in task procedures produced wide variations in children's performance in 3-option false-belief tasks. In Chapter IV, we report findings which show that the developmental lag between children's understanding ignorance and understanding false belief is longer than the lag reported in previous studies. In Chapter V, children did not distinguish between agents who have false beliefs versus agents who have no beliefs. In Chapter VI, findings showed that children found it no easier to reason about true beliefs than to reason about false beliefs. In Chapter VII, when children were asked to justify their correct answers in false-belief tasks, they did not reference agents’ false beliefs. Similarly, in Chapter VIII, when children were asked to explain agents’ actions in false-belief tasks, they did not reference agents’ false beliefs. In Chapter IX, children who were identified as using PAR differed from children who understood beliefs along three dimensions—in levels of social development, inhibitory control, and kindergarten adjustment. Although the findings need replication and additional studies of alternative interpretations, the collection of results reported in this monograph challenges the prevailing view that representational ToM is in place by the end of the preschool years. Furthermore, the pattern of findings is consistent with the proposal that PAR is the developmental precursor of representational ToM. The current findings also raise questions about claims that infants and toddlers demonstrate ToM-related abilities, and that representational ToM is innate.     

Deaf children's use of beliefs and desires in negotiation

Although several studies have shown that deaf children demonstrated impaired performances on false-belief tasks, the children's belief understanding appeared intact when asked to explain emotions or behavior. However, this finding does not necessarily indicate a full-fledged theory of mind. This study aimed to investigate deaf children's negotiation strategies in false-belief situations, because situations that require negotiation provide a natural context with a clear motivational aspect, which might appeal more strongly to deaf children's false-belief reasoning capacities. The purpose of this study was to compare the reactions of 11- to 12-year-old deaf and hearing children to scenarios in which a mother, who is unaware of a change in the situation, threatens to block the fulfillment of the child's desire. The results showed that deaf children more often failed to correct the mother's false beliefs. In contrast with hearing children, who frequently left their own desires implicit, deaf children kept stressing their desires as a primary argument, even though the mother could be expected to be fully aware of these desires. Moral claims were used to the same extent by both groups. In general, deaf children more often used arguments that did not provide new information for their conversation partners, including repetitions of the same argument. The results were interpreted in terms of the special needs that are required by the hampered communication between deaf and hearing people as well as in terms of the ongoing discussion regarding theory-of-mind development in deaf children.     

Executive functioning and preschoolers' understanding of false beliefs, false photographs, and false signs

Two studies were conducted to investigate the specificity of the relationship between preschoolers' emerging executive functioning skills and false belief understanding. Study 1 ( N =44) showed that 3- to 5-year-olds' performance on an executive functioning task that required selective suppression of actions predicted performance on false belief tasks, but not on false photograph tasks. Study 2 ( N =54) replicated the finding from Study 1 and showed that performance on the executive functioning task also predicted 3- to 5-year-olds' performance on false sign tasks. These findings show that executive functioning is required to reason only about representations that are intended to reflect a true state of affairs. Results are discussed with respect to theories of preschoolers' theory-of-mind development.     

Young children's attribution of action to beliefs and desires

When and how children understand beliefs and desires is central to whether they are ever childhood realists and when they evidence a theory of mind. Adults typically construe human action as resulting from an actor's beliefs and desires, a mentalistic interpretation that represents a common and fundamental form of psychological explanation. We investigated children's ability to do likewise. In Experiment 1, 60 subjects were asked to explain why story characters performed simple actions, such as looking under a piano for a kitten. Both preschoolers and adults gave predominantly psychological explanations, attributing the actions to the actor's beliefs and desires. Even 3-year-olds attributed actions to beliefs and false beliefs, demonstrating an understanding of belief not evident in previous research. In Experiment 2, 24 3-year-olds were tested further on their understanding of false belief. They were given both false belief prediction and explanation tasks. Children performed well on explanation taks, attributing an anomalous action to the actor's false belief, even when they failed to predict correctly what action would follow from a false belief. We concluded that 3-year-olds and adults share a fundamentally similar construal of human action in terms of beliefs and desires, even false beliefs.     

Young Children's Understanding of Fictional versus Epistemic Mental Representations: Imagination and Belief

In 2 studies, 3- and 4-year-old children's ability to reason about the relation between mental representations and reality was examined. In the first study, children received parallel false belief and "false" imagination tasks. Results revealed that children performed better on imagination tasks than on belief tasks. The second study demonstrated that, when various alternative explanations for better performance on the imagination task were controlled for, children still performed significantly better when reasoning about another person's imagination than when reasoning about another person's belief. These findings suggest that children's understanding that mental representations can differ from reality may emerge first with respect to representations that do not purport to represent reality truthfully.     

Can We Boost Preschoolers’ Inhibitory Performance Just by Changing the Way They Respond?

Changing the way children make their response appears to sometimes, but not always, boost their inhibitory control—though interpreting existing findings is hampered by inconsistent methods and results. This study investigated the effects of delaying, and changing, the means of responding. Ninety-six preschoolers (M_age 46 months) completed tasks assessing inhibitory control, counterfactual reasoning, strategic reasoning, and false belief understanding. Children responded either immediately or after a delay, and either by pointing with their finger, or with a hand-held arrow. Delaying boosted performance on all tasks except false belief understanding; arrow-pointing only improved strategic reasoning. It is suggested that delay helps children work out the correct response; it is unlikely to help on tasks where this requirement is absent.     

Conceptual Coherence in the Child's Theory of Mind: Training Children to Understand Belief

Intuitive theories are defined as coherently interrelated systems of concepts that generate explanations and predictions in a particular domain of experience. 2 studies tested whether the child's theory of mind can be characterized as an intuitive theory. In Study 1, 3-year-old children who did not pass a false belief pretest were trained in 2 groups: (1) on the concept of belief, or (2) on the related concepts of desire and perception. Training took place over 2 weeks, with children given mental state tasks and receiving feedback according to their performance. Both training groups showed improved false belief performance on the posttest, compared to a control group trained on number conservation. This result is interpreted as demonstrating coherence in the child's theory of mind. In Study 2, these findings were repeated and expanded: training on belief as well as training on desire and perception resulted in improved performance on a variety of standard theory of mind posttests. Results are discussed with respect to competing theories of children's intuitive psychological knowledge.     

Relations Between False Belief Understanding and Executive Function in Early Childhood: A Meta‐Analysis

The association between executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) has been hotly debated for 20 years. Competing accounts focus on: task demands, conceptual overlap, or functional ties. Findings from this meta‐analytic review of 102 studies (representing 9,994 participants aged 3–6 years) indicate that the moderate association between EF and one key aspect of ToM, false belief understanding (FBU) is: (a) similar for children from different cultures, (b) largely consistent across distinct EF tasks, but varies across different types of false belief task, and (c) is asymmetric in that early individual differences in EF predict later variation in FBU but not vice versa. These findings support a hybrid emergence‐expression account and highlight new directions for research.     

Gesture as a window on children's beginning understanding of false belief

Given that gestures may provide access to transitions in cognitive development, preschoolers' performance on standard tasks was compared with their performance on a new gesture false belief task. Experiment 1 confirmed that children (N=45, M age=54 months) responded consistently on two gesture tasks and that there is dramatic improvement on both the gesture false belief task and a standard task from ages 3 to 5. In 2 subsequent experiments focusing on children in transition with respect to understanding false beliefs (Ns=34 and 70, M age=48 months), there was a significant advantage of gesture over standard and novel verbal-response tasks. Iconic gesture may facilitate reasoning about opaque mental states in children who are rapidly developing concepts of mind.     

Metamemory in children with autism

Five experiments are reported comparing metamemory abilities in children with autism, age- and language-matched mentally retarded children, and language-matched young normal controls. The mean language age of the participants in Experiment 1 was approximately 6 years, in Experiments 2, 3, and 4 approximately 8 years, and in Experiment 5 approximately 9 years. All the children were given one or more false belief tests. Experiment 1 assessed the children's understanding that a task variable (list length) and a person variable (age) will affect their own and others' performances on an immediate auditory-verbal recall task. Experiment 2 assessed the ability to utilize category cues in a picture recall task. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed the ability to verbalize strategies used in a memory span test and in one retrospective and two prospective memory situations. Experiment 5 assessed the children's knowledge and understanding of another person's memory. On the basis of available evidence and theory, we predicted that the children with autism would be impaired on all the metamemory tasks and that impairment would be associated with failure on tests of false belief. Our predictions were not supported. The children with autism were not impaired on any of the metamemory tasks, although they were less likely than controls to make spontaneous use of memory strategies involving other people. Unexpectedly few of the children failed the false belief tasks. These results are discussed in relation to theories concerning primary psychological deficits underlying autism.     

The Role of Age and Verbal Ability in the Theory of Mind Task Performance of Subjects with Autism

A number of studies have reported that most children with autism fail theory of mind tasks. It is unclear why certain children with autism pass such tests and what might be different about these subjects. In the present study, the role of age and verbal ability in theory of mind task performance was explored. Data were pooled from 70 autistic, 34 mentally handicapped, and 70 normal young subjects, previously tested for a number of different studies. The analysis suggested that children with autism required far higher verbal mental age to pass false belief tasks than did other subjects. While normally developing children had a 50% probability of passing both tasks at the verbal mental age of 4 years, autistic subjects took more than twice as long to reach this probability of success (at the advanced verbal mental age of 9-2). Possible causal relations between verbal ability and the ability to represent mental states are discussed.     

Seriation, Conservation, and Theory of Mind Abilities in Individuals with Autism, Individuals with Mental Retardation, and Normally Developing Children

Seriation, conservation, and theory of mind abilities were examined in individuals with autism ( N = 16), mental retardation ( N = 16), and in normally developing children ( N = 16). Seriation tasks included seriation of tubes, blocks, and flat squares. Conservation tasks included conservation of area, number, substance, quantity, and weight. Theory of mind tasks involved predicting false belief and understanding value and fact beliefs. Participants with autism performed better than participants with mental retardation on seriation, while no differences emerged between these groups on conservation and false belief. Individuals with autism performed less well than individuals with mental retardation on the value and fact belief tasks; however, when verbal ability was held as a covariant, the difference was no longer significant. Normally developing children performed better than the other two groups on all tasks. These results suggest that autism does not involve a specific impairment in theory of mind and that theory of mind deficits are not unique to autism.     

The Association Between Narratives and Theory of Mind for Low-Income Preschoolers

This study investigated the relationship between narrative skills and theory of mind for low-income children. Two groups of low-income preschoolers, one African American (n = 33) and one European American (n = 36), created a narrative and participated in a false belief task. The European Americans outperformed African Americans on the false belief task, but there were no differences in the narrative skills across the groups. After controlling for children's age, false belief performance had no effect on European Americans' narrative abilities. However, African Americans who passed the false belief task told stories that were more grammatically coherent and social cognitively sophisticated than those African American children who did not pass the task.     

自闭症儿童缺乏"心理理论"吗?——基于神经现象学的解读

心理理论这一概念将儿童心智阅读能力视作一种基于规则或逻辑的推理,并以此设计出了错误信念任务等经典任务.大量研究显示自闭症儿童在这些任务上的表现不佳,因此该群体被认为是缺少心理理论的"心灵盲".基于对心理理论概念及其元理论的分析,并在神经现象学视角下结合镜像神经元研究、自闭症儿童的主观报告及其行为的现象学描述,本文尝试揭...     

The Association Between Narratives and Theory of Mind for Low-Income Preschoolers

This study investigated the relationship between narrative skills and theory of mind for low-income children. Two groups of low-income preschoolers, one African American (n = 33) and one European American (n = 36), created a narrative and participated in a false belief task. The European Americans outperformed African Americans on the false belief task, but there were no differences in the narrative skills across the groups. After controlling for children's age, false belief performance had no effect on European Americans' narrative abilities. However, African Americans who passed the false belief task told stories that were more grammatically coherent and social cognitively sophisticated than those African American children who did not pass the task.     

When you shouldn't do what you want to do: young children's understanding of desires, rules, and emotions

This research investigated 4- through 7-year-olds' and adults' (n = 64) concepts about the emotional consequences of desire fulfillment versus desire inhibition in situations where people's desires conflict with prohibitive rules. Results revealed developmental increases in attributing positive or mixed emotions to story characters that make willpower decisions and negative or mixed emotions to characters that transgress. These developmental changes in emotion predictions were accompanied by age-related differences in emotion explanations. Whereas 4- and 5-year-olds largely explained emotions in relation to the characters' goals, 7-year-olds and adults further explained how rules and future consequences influence emotions. Results are discussed in relation to connections among children's psychological, deontic, and future-oriented reasoning about emotions as well as the development of self-control.     

Drawing insight from pictures: the development of concepts of false drawing and false belief in children with deafness,normal hearing,and autism

Theory-of-mind concepts in children with deafness, autism, and normal development (N = 154) were examined in three experiments using a set of standard inferential false-belief tasks and matched sets of tasks involving false drawings. Results of all three experiments replicated previously published findings by showing that primary school children with deafness or autism, aged 6 to 13 years, scored significantly lower than normal-developing 4-year-old preschoolers on standard misleading-container and unseen-change tests of false-belief understanding. Furthermore, deaf and autistic children generally scored higher on drawing-based tests than on corresponding standard tests and, on the most challenging of the false-drawing tests in Experiment 2, they significantly outperformed the normal-developing preschoolers by clearly understanding their own false intentions and another person's false beliefs about an actively misleading drawing. In Experiment 3, preschoolers outperformed older deaf and autistic children on standard tasks, but did less well on a task that required the drawing of a false belief. Methodological factors could not fully explain the findings, but early social and conversational experiences in the family were deemed likely contributors.     

Inferring False Beliefs from Actions and Reactions

Current evidence suggests that young children have little understanding of false belief. Standard false belief tasks, however, may underestimate children's ability for 2 reasons. First, the only cue to belief in these tasks is a protagonist's lack of perceptual access to some critical event, and this may not be a very salient cue for young children. Second, the standard tasks require children to make forward-looking predictions from the causes of a belief (e.g., from what a protagonist has or has not perceived) to either the protagonist's belief or the protagonist's action, and children may not be very skilled at making such predictions. In 2 experiments we investigated whether 3-year-olds would do better on tasks in which the belief cues were stronger, and in which they could reason backward to the belief from its effects (e.g., from a protagonist's actions and reactions). Even on these easy tasks, however, they did not perform well. These findings provide strong support for the view that children of this age do not fully understand the representational nature of belief.     

The interplay of positivity and self-verification strivings: Feedback preference under increased desire for self-enhancement

Feedback preference is motivated. In the educational context, two main drivers of feedback preference are the desire for positive evaluation (self-enhancement motive) and the desire for subjectively accurate information (self-verification motive). Whereas the former produces positivity bias, the latter is seen in the preference for feedback consistent with one's established self-perception. Therefore, before the study, we measured participants' self-perception in the social domain. In the laboratory, we presented them with two evaluations of their social abilities: one positive, one negative. We tested participants' preferences for these feedback options under increased self-enhancement motivation. Study 1 showed that participants high (vs. low) on the desire for positive evaluation exhibited an enhanced preference for positive feedback. This was mainly true for participants with positive self-perception. Study 2 showed that under situationally increased self-enhancement motivation, people prefer positive feedback, regardless of its perceived accuracy. The results shed light on how motivation affects feedback processing.