In
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing
mental state
A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definiti ...
s to them (that is,
surmising what is happening in their
mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
). This includes the knowledge that others' mental states may be different from one's own states and include
beliefs
A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take i ...
,
desires
Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like "wanting", "wishing", "longing" or "craving". A great variety of features is commonly associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of affa ...
,
intentions
Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''a ...
,
emotions
Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...
, and
thoughts
In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, an ...
. Possessing a functional theory of mind is considered crucial for success in everyday human
social interaction
A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
s. People use such a theory when
analyzing
Analysis ( : analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (384 ...
,
judging
Judgement (or US spelling judgment) is also known as ''adjudication'', which means the evaluation of evidence to make a decision. Judgement is also the ability to make considered decisions. The term has at least five distinct uses. Aristotle ...
, and
inferring
Inferences are steps in reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word ''wikt:infer, infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deductive reasoning, deduction and in ...
others' behaviors. The discovery and development of theory of mind primarily came from studies done with animals and infants.
Factors including drug and alcohol consumption, language development, cognitive delays, age, and culture can affect a person's capacity to display theory of mind.
It has been proposed that deficits in theory of mind can occur in people with
autism
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
(although this is contentious),
anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa, often referred to simply as anorexia, is an eating disorder characterized by low weight, food restriction, body image disturbance, fear of gaining weight, and an overpowering desire to be thin. ''Anorexia'' is a term of Gr ...
,
schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
,
dysphoria
Dysphoria (; ) is a profound state of unease or dissatisfaction. It is the semantic opposite of euphoria. In a psychiatric context, dysphoria may accompany depression, anxiety, or agitation.
In psychiatry
Intense states of distress and unea ...
,
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by excessive amounts of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that are pervasive, impairing in multiple contexts, and otherwise age-inap ...
,
cocaine addiction
Cocaine dependence is a neurological disorder that is characterized by withdrawal symptoms upon cessation from cocaine use. It also often coincides with cocaine addiction which is a biopsychosocial disorder characterized by persistent use of coc ...
, and
brain damage
Neurotrauma, brain damage or brain injury (BI) is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors. In general, brain damage refers to significant, undiscriminating t ...
caused by
alcohol's neurotoxicity
Alcohol-related brain damage alters both the structure and function of the brain as a result of the direct neurotoxic effects of alcohol intoxication or acute alcohol withdrawal. Increased alcohol intake is associated with damage to brain regions ...
;
deficits associated with opiate addiction are reversed after prolonged abstinence. Having a theory of mind is similar to but not identical with having the capacity for
empathy
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, co ...
or for
sympathy
Sympathy is the perception of, understanding of, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form. According to David Hume, this sympathetic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint from a personal perspective to the perspective of ano ...
.
Theory of mind develops throughout childhood as the
prefrontal cortex
In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14, BA24, BA25, BA32, BA44, BA45, BA46, ...
develops. The
violation-of-expectation procedure uses infants' tendency to look longer at unexpected and surprising events. Most typically developing children are able to pass the False-belief task from around age four. Children from Iran and China in a culture of
collectivism
Collectivism may refer to:
* Bureaucratic collectivism, a theory of class society whichto describe the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin
* Collectivist anarchism, a socialist doctrine in which the workers own and manage the production
* Collectiv ...
develop knowledge access earlier and understand diverse beliefs later than Western children in a culture of
individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...
.
Neuroimaging
Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...
shows brain regions engaged during theory of mind include the
medial prefrontal cortex
In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14, BA24, BA25, BA32, BA44, BA45, BA46, ...
(
mPFC), and area around posterior
superior temporal sulcus
The superior temporal sulcus (STS) is the sulcus separating the superior temporal gyrus from the middle temporal gyrus in the temporal lobe of the brain. A sulcus (plural sulci) is a deep groove that curves into the largest part of the brain, t ...
(pSTS), and sometimes
precuneus
In neuroanatomy, the precuneus is the portion of the superior parietal lobule on the medial surface of each brain hemisphere. It is located in front of the cuneus (the upper portion of the occipital lobe). The precuneus is bounded in front by th ...
and
amygdala
The amygdala (; plural: amygdalae or amygdalas; also '; Latin from Greek, , ', 'almond', 'tonsil') is one of two almond-shaped clusters of nuclei located deep and medially within the temporal lobes of the brain's cerebrum in complex verteb ...
/
temporopolar cortex. Patients with
frontal lobe
The frontal lobe is the largest of the four major lobes of the brain in mammals, and is located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere (in front of the parietal lobe and the temporal lobe). It is parted from the parietal lobe by a groove betwe ...
or
temporoparietal junction
The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is an area of the brain where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, at the posterior end of the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). The TPJ incorporates information from the thalamus and the limbic system as well ...
lesions find some theory of mind tasks difficult.
Many researchers focus on animals' understanding of intention,
gaze
In critical theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, the gaze (French ''le regard''), in the philosophical and figurative sense, is an individual's (or a group's) awareness and perception of other individuals, other groups, or oneself. The concept ...
, perspective, or knowledge. A study showed
orangutan
Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus ...
s and
chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...
s understood the difference between accidental and intentional acts. William Field and
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Emily Sue Savage-Rumbaugh (born August 16, 1946) is a psychologist and primatologist most known for her work with two bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha, investigating their linguistic and cognitive abilities using lexigrams and computer-based keyboa ...
believe that
bonobo
The bonobo (; ''Pan paniscus''), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee, is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus '' Pan,'' the other being the comm ...
s have developed theory of mind.
Theory of mind is distinct from
philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...
, which is about the basic nature of the mind and how the
brain
A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a v ...
enables it.
Definition
Theory of mind is a "
theory
A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be s ...
" because the behavior of the other person, such as their statements and expressions, is the only thing being directly observed. Their mind and its contents cannot be observed directly, so the existence and nature of the mind must be inferred.
The presumption that others have a mind is termed a theory of mind because each human can only observe their own mind (via
introspection
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's s ...
); no one has direct access to the mind of another. It is typically assumed that others have minds analogous to one's own; this assumption is based on reciprocal social interaction, as observed in
joint attention
Joint attention or shared attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It is achieved when one individual alerts another to an object by means of eye-gazing, pointing or other verbal or non-verbal indications. An individual gaze ...
,
the functional use of language, and the understanding of others' emotions and actions. Theory of mind allows one to attribute thoughts, desires, and intentions to others, to predict or explain their actions, and to posit their intentions. It enables one to understand that mental states can be the cause of—and so can be used to explain and predict—the behavior of others.
Being able to attribute mental states to others and understanding them as causes of behavior implies, in part, that one must be able to conceive of the mind as a "generator of representations". If a person does not have a mature theory of mind, it may be a sign of cognitive or developmental impairment.
Theory of mind appears to be an innate potential ability in humans that requires social and other experience over many years for its full development. Different people may develop more or less effective theories of mind.
Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development maintain that theory of mind is a byproduct of a broader
hypercognitive ability of the human mind to register, monitor, and represent its own functioning.
Empathy
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, co ...
—the recognition and understanding of the states of mind of others, including their beliefs, desires, and particularly emotions—is a related concept. Empathy is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes". Recent
neuro-ethological studies of animal behaviour suggest that even rodents may exhibit empathetic abilities. While empathy is known as emotional perspective-taking, theory of mind is defined as cognitive perspective-taking.
Research on theory of mind, in humans and animals, adults and children, normally and atypically developing, has grown rapidly in the years since
Premack and Guy Woodruff's 1978 paper, "Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?".
The field of
social neuroscience
Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding the relationship between social experiences and biological systems. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than solitary. As such, ''Homo sapiens'' create emerg ...
has also begun to address this debate by imaging the brains of humans while they perform tasks that require the understanding of an intention, belief, or other mental state in others.
An alternative account of theory of mind is given in
operant
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where behaviors are modified through the association of stimuli with reinforcement or punishment. In it, operants—behaviors that affect one's environment—are c ...
psychology and provides
empirical evidence
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
for a functional account of both perspective-taking and empathy. The most developed operant approach is founded on research on derived relational responding and is subsumed within
relational frame theory
Relational frame theory (RFT) is a psychological theory of human language, cognition, and behaviour. It was developed originally by Steven C. Hayes of University of Nevada, Reno and has been extended in research, notably by Dermot Barnes-Holmes ...
. According to this view, empathy and perspective-taking comprise a complex set of derived relational abilities based on learning to discriminate and respond verbally to ever more complex relations between self, others, place, and time, and through established relations.
Philosophical and psychological roots
Discussions of theory of mind have their roots in philosophical debate from the time of
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathem ...
' ''
Second Meditation'', which set the groundwork for considering the science of the mind.
Two contrasting approaches in the philosophical literature to theory of mind are
theory-theory The theory-theory (or theory theory) is a scientific theory relating to the human development of understanding about the outside world. This theory asserts that individuals hold a basic or 'naïve' theory of psychology ("folk psychology") to infer t ...
and
simulation theory Simulation theory or Simulation Theory may refer to:
*Simulation theory of empathy, theory in philosophy of mind about how people read others' actions and intentions
*Simulation Theory (album), ''Simulation Theory'' (album), 2018 studio album by th ...
. The theory-theorist posits a veritable theory—"folk psychology"—that people use to reason about others' minds. Such a theory is developed automatically and innately, though it is instantiated through social interactions. It is also closely related to
person perception
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...
and
attribution theory
Attribution is a term used in psychology which deals with how individuals perceive the causes of everyday experience, as being either external or internal. Models to explain this process are called attribution theory. Psychological research into a ...
from
social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
.
It is common and intuitive to assume that others are minded. People
anthropomorphize
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...
non-human animals, inanimate objects, and even natural phenomena.
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
referred to this tendency as taking an "
intentional stance
The intentional stance is a term coined by philosopher Daniel Dennett for the level of abstraction in which we view the behavior of an entity in terms of mental properties. It is part of a theory of mental content proposed by Dennett, which provid ...
" toward things: we assume they have intentions, to help predict their future behavior. However, there is an important distinction between taking an "intentional stance" toward something and entering a "shared world" with it. The intentional stance is a theory we resort to during interpersonal interactions. A shared world is directly perceived and its existence structures reality itself for the perceiver. It is not just automatically applied to perception; it in many ways constitutes perception.
The philosophical roots of the
relational frame theory
Relational frame theory (RFT) is a psychological theory of human language, cognition, and behaviour. It was developed originally by Steven C. Hayes of University of Nevada, Reno and has been extended in research, notably by Dermot Barnes-Holmes ...
(RFT) account of theory of mind arise from
contextual psychology which refers to the study of organisms (both human and non-human) interacting in and with a historical and current situational context. It is an approach based on
contextualism
Contextualism, also known as epistemic contextualism, is a family of views in philosophy which emphasize the ''context'' in which an action, utterance, or expression occurs. Proponents of contextualism argue that, in some important respect, the a ...
, a philosophy in which any event is interpreted as an ongoing act inseparable from its current and historical context and in which
a radically functional approach to truth and meaning is adopted. As a variant of contextualism, RFT focuses on the construction of practical, scientific knowledge. This scientific form of contextual psychology is virtually synonymous with the philosophy of operant psychology.
Development
The study of which animals are capable of attributing knowledge and mental states to others, as well as the development of this ability in human
ontogeny
Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the stu ...
and
phylogeny
A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spec ...
, identifies several behavioral precursors to theory of mind. Understanding attention, understanding of others' intentions, and imitative experience with others are hallmarks of a theory of mind that may be observed early in the development of what later becomes a full-fledged theory.
Simon Baron-Cohen
Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen (born 15 August 1958) is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of ...
proposed that infants' understanding of attention in others acts as a "critical precursor" to the development of theory of mind.
Understanding attention involves understanding that seeing can be directed selectively as attention, that the looker assesses the seen object as "of interest", and that seeing can induce beliefs. A possible illustration of theory of mind in infants is joint attention. Joint attention refers to when two people look at and attend to the same thing. Parents often use the act of pointing to prompt infants to engage in joint attention; understanding this prompt requires that infants take into account another person's mental state, and understand that the person notices an object or finds it of interest. Baron-Cohen speculates that the inclination to spontaneously reference an object in the world as of interest, via pointing, ("protodeclarative pointing") and to likewise appreciate the directed attention of another, may be the underlying motive behind all human communication.
Understanding of others' intentions is another critical precursor to understanding other minds because intentionality, or "aboutness", is a fundamental feature of mental states and events. The "intentional stance" was defined by
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
as an understanding that others' actions are goal-directed and arise from particular beliefs or desires. Both two- and three-year-old children could discriminate when an experimenter intentionally vs. accidentally marked a box with stickers as .
Even earlier in ontogeny,
Andrew N. Meltzoff
Andrew N. Meltzoff (born February 9, 1950) is an American psychologist and an internationally recognized expert on infant and child development. His discoveries about infant imitation greatly advanced the scientific understanding of early cognition ...
found that 18-month-old infants could perform target manipulations that adult experimenters attempted and failed, suggesting the infants could represent the object-manipulating behavior of adults as involving goals and intentions.
While attribution of intention (the box-marking) and knowledge (false-belief tasks) is investigated in young humans and nonhuman animals to detect precursors to a theory of mind, Gagliardi et al. have pointed out that even adult humans do not always act in a way consistent with an attributional perspective. In their experiment, adult human subjects made choices about baited containers when guided by confederates who could not see (and so could not know) which container was baited.
Research in developmental psychology suggests that an infant's ability to imitate others lies at the origins of both theory of mind and other social-cognitive achievements like
perspective-taking Perspective-taking is the act of perceiving a situation or understanding a concept from an alternative point of view, such as that of another individual.
A vast amount of scientific literature suggests that perspective-taking is crucial to human de ...
and empathy. According to Meltzoff, the infant's innate understanding that others are "like me" allows it to recognize the equivalence between the physical and mental states apparent in others and those felt by the self. For example, the infant uses his own experiences, orienting his head/eyes toward an object of interest to understand the movements of others who turn toward an object, that is, that they will generally attend to objects of interest or significance. Some researchers in comparative disciplines have hesitated to put a too-ponderous weight on imitation as a critical precursor to advanced human social-cognitive skills like mentalizing and empathizing, especially if true imitation is no longer employed by adults. A test of imitation by
Alexandra Horowitz
''Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know'' is a book written by cognitive scientist, Alexandra Horowitz. Horowitz walks the reader through the cognitive process of dogs in relation to how they perceive their day-to-day activities. The au ...
found that adult subjects imitated an experimenter demonstrating a novel task far less closely than children did. Horowitz points out that the precise psychological state underlying imitation is unclear and cannot, by itself, be used to draw conclusions about the mental states of humans.
While much research has been done on infants, theory of mind develops continuously throughout childhood and into late adolescence as the synapses (neuronal connections) in the prefrontal cortex develop. The prefrontal cortex is thought to be involved in planning and decision-making.
Children seem to develop theory of mind skills sequentially. The first skill to develop is the ability to recognize that others have diverse desires. Children are able to recognize that others have diverse beliefs soon after. The next skill to develop is recognizing that others have access to different knowledge bases. Finally, children are able to understand that others may have false beliefs and that others are capable of hiding emotions. While this sequence represents the general trend in skill acquisition, it seems that more emphasis is placed on some skills in certain cultures, leading to more valued skills to develop before those that are considered not as important. For example, in individualistic cultures such as the United States, a greater emphasis is placed on the ability to recognize that others have different opinions and beliefs. In a collectivistic culture, such as China, this skill may not be as important and therefore may not develop until later.
Language
There is evidence that the development of theory of mind is closely intertwined with language development in humans. One meta-analysis showed a moderate to strong correlation (''r'' = 0.43) between performance on theory of mind and language tasks. Both language and theory of mind begin to develop around the same time in children (between ages two and five), but many other abilities develop during this same time period as well, and they do not produce such high correlations with one another nor with theory of mind.
Pragmatic theories of communication assume that infants must possess an understanding of beliefs and mental states of others to infer the communicative content that proficient language users intend to convey. Since a verbal utterance is often underdetermined, and so it can have different meanings depending on the actual context, theory of mind can play a crucial role in understanding the communicative and informative intentions of others and inferring the meaning of words. Some empirical results suggest that even 13-month-old infants have an early capacity for communicative mind-reading that enables them to infer what relevant information is transferred between communicative partners, which implies that human language relies at least partially on theory of mind skills.
Carol A. Miller posed further possible explanations for this relationship. Perhaps the extent of verbal communication and conversation involving children in a family could explain theory of mind development. Such language exposure could help introduce a child to the different mental states and perspectives of others.
Empirical findings indicate that participation in family discussion predicts scores on theory of mind tasks, and that deaf children who have hearing parents and may not be able to communicate with their parents much during early years of development tend to score lower on theory of mind tasks.
Another explanation of the relationship between language and theory of mind development has to do with a child's understanding of mental-state words such as "''think''" and "''believe''". Since a mental state is not something that one can observe from behavior, children must learn the meanings of words denoting mental states from verbal explanations alone, requiring knowledge of the syntactic rules, semantic systems, and pragmatics of a language.
Studies have shown that understanding of these mental state words predicts theory of mind in four-year-olds.
A third hypothesis is that the ability to distinguish a whole sentence ("Jimmy thinks the world is flat") from its embedded complement ("the world is flat") and understand that one can be true while the other can be false is related to theory of mind development. Recognizing these sentential complements as being independent of one another is a relatively complex syntactic skill and correlates with increased scores on theory of mind tasks in children.
There is also evidence that the areas of the brain responsible for language and theory of mind are closely connected. The
temporoparietal junction
The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is an area of the brain where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, at the posterior end of the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). The TPJ incorporates information from the thalamus and the limbic system as well ...
(TPJ) is involved in the ability to acquire new vocabulary, as well as to perceive and reproduce words. The TPJ also contains areas that specialize in recognizing faces, voices, and biological motion, and in theory of mind. Since all of these areas are located so closely together, it is reasonable to suspect that they work together. Studies have reported an increase in activity in the TPJ when patients are absorbing information through reading or images regarding other peoples' beliefs but not while observing information about physical control stimuli.
Theory of mind in adults
Neurotypical adults have theory of mind concepts that they developed as children (concepts such as belief, desire, knowledge, and intention). How do they use these concepts to meet the diverse demands of social life, ranging from snap decisions about how to trick an opponent in a competitive game, to keeping up with who knows what in a fast-moving conversation, to judging the guilt or innocence of the accused in a court of law?
Boaz Keysar, Dale Barr, and colleagues found that adults often failed to ''use'' their theory of mind abilities to interpret a speaker's message, even though they were perfectly well aware that the speaker lacked critical knowledge. Other studies show that adults are prone to "egocentric biases", with which they are influenced by their own beliefs, knowledge, or preferences when judging those of other people, or else they neglect other people's perspectives entirely. There is also evidence that adults with greater memory and inhibitory capacity and greater motivation are more likely to use their theory of mind abilities.
In contrast, evidence about indirect effects of thinking about other people's mental states suggests that adults may sometimes use their theory of mind automatically. Agnes Kovacs and colleagues measured the time it took adults to detect the presence of a ball as it was revealed from behind an occluder. They found that adults' speed of response was influenced by whether or not an avatar in the scene thought there was a ball behind the occluder, even though adults were not asked to pay attention to what the avatar thought. Dana Samson and colleagues measured the time it took adults to judge the number of dots on the wall of a room. They found that adults responded more slowly when an avatar standing in the room happened to see fewer dots than they did, even when they had never been asked to pay attention to what the avatar could see. It has been questioned whether these "altercentric biases" truly reflect automatic processing of what another person is thinking or seeing, or whether they instead reflect attention and memory effects cued by the avatar, but not involving any representation of what they think or see.
Different theories seek to explain such results. If theory of mind is automatic, this would help explain how people keep up with the theory of mind demands of competitive games and fast-moving conversations. It might also explain evidence that human infants and some non-human species sometimes appear capable of theory of mind, despite their limited resources for memory and cognitive control.
If theory of mind is effortful and not automatic, on the other hand, this explains why it feels effortful to decide whether a defendant is guilty or innocent, or whether a negotiator is bluffing, and economy of effort would help explain why people sometimes neglect to use their theory of mind.
Ian Apperly and
Stephen Butterfill suggested that people have "two systems" for theory of mind, in common with "two systems" accounts in many other areas of psychology. In this account, "system 1" is cognitively efficient and enables theory of mind for a limited but useful set of circumstances. "System 2" is cognitively effortful, but enables much more flexible theory of mind abilities. Philosopher
Peter Carruthers disagrees, arguing that the same core theory of mind abilities can be used in both simple and complex ways. The account has been criticised by Celia Heyes who suggests that "system 1" theory of mind abilities do not require representation of mental states of other people, and so are better thought of as "sub-mentalising".
Ageing
In older age, theory of mind capacities decline, irrespective of how exactly they are tested (e.g. stories, eyes, videos, false belief-video, false belief-other, and faux pas). However, the decline in other cognitive functions is even stronger, suggesting that social cognition is better preserved. In contrast to theory of mind, empathy shows no impairments in aging.
There are two kinds of theory of mind representations: cognitive (concerning the mental states, beliefs, thoughts, and intentions of others) and affective (concerning the emotions of others). Cognitive theory of mind is further separated into first order (e.g., I think she thinks that) and second order (e.g. he thinks that she thinks that). There is evidence that cognitive and affective theory of mind processes are functionally independent from one another. In studies of Alzheimer's disease, which typically occurs in older adults, patients display impairment with second order cognitive theory of mind, but usually not with first order cognitive or affective theory of mind. However, it is difficult to discern a clear pattern of theory of mind variation due to age. There have been many discrepancies in the data collected thus far, likely due to small sample sizes and the use of different tasks that only explore one aspect of theory of mind. Many researchers suggest that theory of mind impairment is simply due to the normal decline in cognitive function.
Cultural variations
Researchers propose that five key aspects of theory of mind develop sequentially for all children between the ages of three and five:
diverse desires (DD), diverse beliefs (DB), knowledge access (KA), false beliefs (FB), and hidden emotions (HE).
Australian, American, and European children acquire theory of mind in this exact order,
and studies with children in Canada, India, Peru, Samoa, and Thailand indicate that they all pass the false belief task at around the same time, suggesting that children develop theory of mind consistently around the world.
However, children from
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
and
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
develop theory of mind in a slightly different order. Although they begin the development of theory of mind around the same time, toddlers from these countries understand knowledge access (KA) before Western children but take longer to understand diverse beliefs (DB).
Researchers believe this swap in the developmental order is related to the culture of
collectivism
Collectivism may refer to:
* Bureaucratic collectivism, a theory of class society whichto describe the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin
* Collectivist anarchism, a socialist doctrine in which the workers own and manage the production
* Collectiv ...
in Iran and China, which emphasizes interdependence and shared knowledge as opposed to the culture of
individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...
in Western countries, which promotes individuality and accepts differing opinions. Because of these different cultural values, Iranian and Chinese children might take longer to understand that other people have different beliefs and opinions. This suggests that the development of theory of mind is not universal and solely determined by innate brain processes but also influenced by social and cultural factors.
Historiography
Theory of mind can help historians to more properly understand historical figures' characters, for example
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
. Emancipationists like
Douglas L. Wilson
Douglas L. Wilson (born November 10, 1935) is the George A. Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of English at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he taught from 1961 to 1994. He then was the founding director of the Robert H. S ...
and scholars at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation view Jefferson as an opponent of slavery all his life, noting Jefferson's attempts within the limited range of options available to him to undermine slavery, his many attempts at abolition legislation, the manner in which he provided for slaves, and his advocacy of their more humane treatment. This view contrasts with that of revisionists like
Paul Finkelman
Paul Finkelman (born November 15, 1949) is an American legal historian, the Robert E. and Susan T. Rydell Visiting Professor at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, and a research affiliate at the Max and Tessie Zelikovitz Centre f ...
, who criticizes Jefferson for racism, slavery, and hypocrisy. Emancipationist views on this hypocrisy recognize that if he tried to be true to his word, it would have alienated his fellow Virginians. In another example,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
did not join NAACP leaders in pushing for federal anti-lynching legislation, as he believed that such legislation was unlikely to pass and that his support for it would alienate Southern congressmen, including many of Roosevelt's fellow Democrats.
Empirical investigation
Whether children younger than three or four years old have a theory of mind is a topic of debate among researchers. It is a challenging question, due to the difficulty of assessing what pre-linguistic children understand about others and the world. Tasks used in research into the development of theory of mind must take into account the ''
umwelt
In the semiotic theories of Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok, ''umwelt'' (plural: umwelten; from the German ''Umwelt'' meaning "environment" or "surroundings") is the "biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study ...
'' of the pre-verbal child.
False-belief task
One of the most important milestones in theory of mind development is the ability to attribute ''false belief'': in other words, to understand that other people can believe things which are not true. To do this, it is suggested, one must understand how knowledge is formed, that people's beliefs are based on their knowledge, that mental states can differ from reality, and that people's behavior can be predicted by their mental states. Numerous versions of false-belief task have been developed, based on the initial task created by Wimmer and Perner (1983).
In the most common version of the false-belief task (often called the
"'Sally-Anne' test" or "'Sally-Anne' task"), children are told or shown a story involving two dolls, Sally and Anne, who have a basket and a box, respectively. Sally also has a marble, which she places into her basket, and then leaves the room. While she is out of the room, Anne takes the marble from the basket and puts it into the box. Sally returns, and the child is then asked where Sally will look for the marble. The child passes the task if she answers that Sally will look in the basket, where Sally put the marble; the child fails the task if she answers that Sally will look in the box, where the child knows the marble is hidden, even though Sally cannot know this, since she did not see it hidden there. To pass the task, the child must be able to understand that another's mental representation of the situation is different from their own, and the child must be able to predict behavior based on that understanding.
Another example depicts a boy who leaves chocolate on a shelf and then leaves the room. His mother puts it in the fridge. To pass the task, the child must understand that the boy, upon returning, holds the false belief that his chocolate is still on the shelf.
The results of research using false-belief tasks have been fairly consistent: most typically developing children are able to pass the tasks from around age four.
Notably, while most children, including those with
Down syndrome
Down syndrome or Down's syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. It is usually associated with physical growth delays, mild to moderate intellectual dis ...
, are able to pass this test, in one study, 80% of children diagnosed with
autism
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
were unable to do so.
Adults may also struggle with false beliefs, for instance when they show
hindsight bias
Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon or creeping determinism, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were. People often believe that after an event ha ...
—"the inclination to see events that have already happened as being more predictable than they were before they took place." In one experiment, adult subjects who were asked for an independent assessment were unable to disregard information on actual outcome. Also in experiments with complicated situations, when assessing others' thinking, adults can fail to correctly disregard certain information that they have been given.
[
]
Unexpected contents
Other tasks have been developed to try to extend the false-belief task. In the "Unexpected contents", or "Smarties" task, experimenters ask children what they believe to be the contents of a box that looks as though it holds a candy called "Smarties
Smarties are colour-varied sugar-coated chocolate confectionery. They have been manufactured since 1937, originally by H.I. Rowntree & Company in the United Kingdom, and now by Nestlé.
Smarties are oblate spheroids with a minor axis of abou ...
". After the child guesses (usually) "Smarties", it is shown that the box in fact contained pencils. The experimenter then re-closes the box and asks the child what she thinks another person, who has not been shown the true contents of the box, will think is inside. The child passes the task if he/she responds that another person will think that "Smarties" exist in the box, but fails the task if she responds that another person will think that the box contains pencils. Gopnik & Astington found that children pass this test at age four or five years.
Other tasks
The "false-photograph" task also measures theory of mind development. In this task, children must reason about what is represented in a photograph that differs from the current state of affairs. Within the false-photograph task, either a location or identity change exists. In the location-change task, the examiner puts an object in one location (e.g. chocolate in an open green cupboard), whereupon the child takes a Polaroid photograph of the scene. While the photograph is developing, the examiner moves the object to a different location (e.g. a blue cupboard), allowing the child to view the examiner's action. The examiner asks the child two control questions: "When we first took the picture, where was the object?" and "Where is the object now?" The subject is also asked a "false-photograph" question: "Where is the object in the picture?" The child passes the task if he/she correctly identifies the location of the object in the picture and the actual location of the object at the time of the question. However, the last question might be misinterpreted as "Where in this room is the object that the picture depicts?" and therefore some examiners use an alternative phrasing.
To make it easier for animals, young children, and individuals with classical (Leo Kanner
Leo Kanner (; born Chaskel Leib Kanner; June 13, 1894 – April 3, 1981) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist, physician, and social activist best known for his work related to autism spectrum disorder. Before working at the Henry Phipps Psychi ...
-type) autism
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
to understand and perform theory of mind tasks, researchers have developed tests in which verbal communication is de-emphasized: some whose administration does not involve verbal communication on the part of the examiner, some whose successful completion does not require verbal communication on the part of the subject, and some that meet both of those standards. One category of tasks uses a preferential-looking paradigm, with looking time as the dependent variable. For instance, nine-month-old infants prefer looking at behaviors performed by a human hand over those made by an inanimate hand-like object. Other paradigms look at rates of imitative behavior, the ability to replicate and complete unfinished goal-directed acts, and rates of pretend play.[Leslie, A. M. (1991). "Theory of mind impairment in autism." In A. Whiten (Ed.), ''Natural theories of mind: Evolution, development and simulation of everyday mindreading'' (pp. 63–77). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.]
Early precursors
Research on the early precursors of theory of mind has invented ways to observe preverbal infants' understanding of other people's mental states, including perception and beliefs. Using a variety of experimental procedures, studies show that infants from their first year of life have an implicit understanding of what other people see and what they know. A popular paradigm used to study infants' theory of mind is the violation-of-expectation procedure, which exploits infants' tendency to look longer at unexpected and surprising events compared to familiar and expected events. The amount of time they look at an event gives researchers an indication of what infants might be inferring, or their implicit understanding of events. One study using this paradigm found that 16-month-olds tend to attribute beliefs to a person whose visual perception was previously witnessed as being "reliable", compared to someone whose visual perception was "unreliable". Specifically, 16-month-olds were trained to expect a person's excited vocalization and gaze into a container to be associated with finding a toy in the reliable-looker condition or an absence of a toy in the unreliable-looker condition. Following this training phase, infants witnessed, in an object-search task, the same persons searching for a toy either in the correct or incorrect location after they both witnessed the location of where the toy was hidden. Infants who experienced the reliable looker were surprised and therefore looked longer when the person searched for the toy in the incorrect location compared to the correct location. In contrast, the looking time for infants who experienced the unreliable looker did not differ for either search locations. These findings suggest that 16-month-old infants can differentially attribute beliefs about a toy's location based on the person's prior record of visual perception.
Methodological problems
With the methods used to test theory of mind, it has been experimentally shown that very simple robots that only react by reflexes and are not built to have any complex cognition at all can pass the tests for having theory of mind abilities that psychology textbooks assume to be exclusive to humans older than four or five years. Whether or not such a robot passes or fails the test is influenced by completely non-cognitive factors such as placement of objects and the structure of the robot body influencing how the reflexes are conducted. It has therefore been suggested that theory of mind tests may not actually test cognitive abilities.
Deficits
Theory of mind impairment, or ''mind-blindness
Mind-blindness, mindblindness or mind blindness is a theory initially developed in 1990 that explains Autism, autistic people as having a lack or developmental delay of theory of mind (ToM), meaning they are unable to attribute mental states to ot ...
'', describes a difficulty someone would have with perspective-taking. Individuals with theory of mind impairment have a difficult time seeing phenomena from any other perspective than their own. Individuals who experience a theory of mind deficit have difficulty determining the intentions of others, lack understanding of how their behavior affects others, and have a difficult time with social reciprocity. Theory of mind deficits have been observed in people with autism spectrum
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
disorders, people with schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
, people with nonverbal learning disorder
Nonverbal learning disability (NVLD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by core deficits in visual-spatial processing in the presence of intact verbal ability. Additional diagnostic criteria include Average to Superior verbal intelli ...
, people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by excessive amounts of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that are pervasive, impairing in multiple contexts, and otherwise age-inap ...
, people under the influence of alcohol and narcotics, sleep-deprived people, and people who are experiencing severe emotional or physical pain. Theory of mind deficits have also been observed in deaf children who are late signers (i.e. are born to hearing parents), but such a deficit is due to the delay in language learning, not any cognitive deficit, and therefore disappears once the child learns sign language.
Autism
In 1985 Simon Baron-Cohen
Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen (born 15 August 1958) is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of ...
, Alan M. Leslie, and Uta Frith
Dame Uta Frith (''née'' Aurnhammer; born 25 May 1941) is a German-British developmental psychologist at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. She has pioneered much of the current research into autism and dysl ...
suggested that children with autism
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
do not employ theory of mind and that autistic children have particular difficulties with tasks requiring the child to understand another person's beliefs. These difficulties persist when children are matched for verbal skills and they have been taken as a key feature of autism. Although in a 2019 review, Gernsbacher and Yergeau argued that "the claim that autistic people lack a theory of mind is empirically questionable", as there have been numerous failed replications of classic ToM studies and the meta-analytical effect sizes of such replications were minimal to small.
Many individuals classified as autistic have severe difficulty assigning mental states to others, and some seem to lack theory of mind capabilities. Researchers who study the relationship between autism and theory of mind attempt to explain the connection in a variety of ways. One account assumes that theory of mind plays a role in the attribution of mental states to others and in childhood pretend play. According to Leslie,[ theory of mind is the capacity to mentally represent thoughts, beliefs, and desires, regardless of whether or not the circumstances involved are real. This might explain why some autistic individuals show extreme deficits in both theory of mind and pretend play. However, Hobson proposes a social-affective justification, in which deficits in theory of mind in autistic people result from a distortion in understanding and responding to emotions. He suggests that typically developing individuals, unlike autistic individuals, are born with a set of skills (such as social referencing ability) that later lets them comprehend and react to other people's feelings. Other scholars emphasize that autism involves a specific developmental delay, so that autistic children vary in their deficiencies, because they experience difficulty in different stages of growth. Very early setbacks can alter proper advancement of joint-attention behaviors, which may lead to a failure to form a full theory of mind.]
It has been speculated that theory of mind exists on a continuum
Continuum may refer to:
* Continuum (measurement), theories or models that explain gradual transitions from one condition to another without abrupt changes
Mathematics
* Continuum (set theory), the real line or the corresponding cardinal number ...
as opposed to the traditional view of a discrete presence or absence. While some research has suggested that some autistic populations are unable to attribute mental states to others, recent evidence points to the possibility of coping mechanisms that facilitate .
A binary view regarding theory of mind contributes to the stigmatization
Social stigma is the disapproval of, or discrimination against, an individual or group based on perceived characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other members of a society. Social stigmas are commonly related to culture, gender, rac ...
of autistic adults that do possess perspective-taking capacity, as the assumption that autistic people do not have empathy can become a rationale for dehumanization
Dehumanization is the denial of full humanness in others and the cruelty and suffering that accompanies it. A practical definition refers to it as the viewing and treatment of other persons as though they lack the mental capacities that are c ...
.
Tine et al. report that autistic children score substantially lower on measures of in comparison to children diagnosed with Asperger syndrome
Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in Interpersonal relationship, social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and re ...
.
Generally, children with more advanced theory of mind abilities display more advanced social skills, greater adaptability to new situations, and greater cooperation with others. As a result, these children are typically well-liked. However, "children may use their mind-reading abilities to manipulate, outwit, tease, or trick their peers." Individuals possessing inferior theory of mind skills, such as children with autism spectrum disorder, may be socially rejected by their peers since they are unable to communicate effectively. Social rejection has been proven to negatively impact a child's development and can put the child at greater risk of developing depressive symptoms.
Peer-mediated interventions (PMI) are a school-based treatment approach for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in which peers are trained to be role models in order to promote social behavior. Laghi et al. studied whether analysis of prosocial (nice) and antisocial (nasty) theory-of-mind behaviors could be used, in addition to teacher recommendations, to select appropriate candidates for PMI programs. Selecting children with advanced theory-of-mind skills who use them in prosocial ways will theoretically make the program more effective. While the results indicated that analyzing the social uses of theory of mind of possible candidates for a PMI program is , it may not be a good predictor of a candidate's performance as a role model.
A 2014 Cochrane review on interventions based on theory of mind found that such a theory could be taught to individuals with autism but claimed little evidence of skill maintenance, generalization to other settings, or development effects on related skills.
Some 21st century studies have shown that the results of some studies of theory of mind tests on autistic people may be misinterpreted based on the double empathy problem
The double empathy problem is a psychological theory, coined in 2012 by autism researcher Damian Milton, which proposes that the social and communication difficulties present in autistic people when socializing with non-autistic people are actuall ...
, which proposes that rather than autistic people specifically having trouble with theory of mind, autistic people and non-autistic people have equal difficulty understanding one-another due to their neurological differences. Studies have shown that autistic adults perform better in theory of mind tests when paired with other autistic adults as well as possibly autistic close family members. Academics who acknowledge the double empathy problem also propose that it is likely autistic people understand non-autistic people to a higher degree than vise-versa, due to the necessity of functioning in a non-autistic society.
Schizophrenia
Individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
can show deficits in theory of mind. Mirjam Sprong and colleagues investigated the impairment by examining 29 different studies, with a total of over 1500 participants. This meta-analysis
A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting me ...
showed significant and stable deficit of theory of mind in people with schizophrenia. They performed poorly on false-belief tasks, which test the ability to understand that others can hold false beliefs about events in the world, and also on intention-inference tasks, which assess the ability to infer a character's intention from reading a short story. Schizophrenia patients with negative symptoms
Signs and symptoms are the observed or detectable signs, and experienced symptoms of an illness, injury, or condition. A sign for example may be a higher or lower temperature than normal, raised or lowered blood pressure or an abnormality showin ...
, such as lack of emotion, motivation, or speech, have the most impairment in theory of mind and are unable to represent the mental states of themselves and of others. Paranoid schizophrenic patients also perform poorly because they have difficulty accurately interpreting others' intentions. The meta-analysis additionally showed that IQ, gender, and age of the participants do not significantly affect the performance of theory of mind tasks.
Research suggests that impairment in theory of mind negatively affects clinical insight—the patient's awareness of their mental illness. Insight requires theory of mind; a patient must be able to adopt a third-person perspective and see the self as others do. A patient with good insight can accurately self-represent, by comparing himself with others and by viewing himself from the perspective of others. Insight allows a patient to recognize and react appropriately to his symptoms. A patient who lacks insight does not realize that he has a mental illness, because of his inability to accurately self-represent. Therapies that teach patients perspective-taking and self-reflection skills can improve abilities in reading social cues and taking the perspective of another person.
Research indicates that theory-of-mind deficit is a stable trait-characteristic rather than a state-characteristic of schizophrenia. The meta-analysis conducted by Sprong et al. showed that patients in remission still had impairment in theory of mind. This indicates that the deficit is not merely a consequence of the active phase of schizophrenia.
Schizophrenic patients' deficit in theory of mind impairs their interactions with others. Theory of mind is particularly important for parents, who must understand the thoughts and behaviors of their children and react accordingly. Dysfunctional parenting is associated with deficits in the first-order theory of mind, the ability to understand another person's thoughts, and in the second-order theory of mind, the ability to infer what one person thinks about another person's thoughts. Compared with healthy mothers, mothers with schizophrenia are found to be more remote, quiet, self-absorbed, insensitive, unresponsive, and to have fewer satisfying interactions with their children. They also tend to misinterpret their children's emotional cues, and often misunderstand neutral faces as negative. Activities such as role-playing and individual or group-based sessions are effective interventions that help the parents improve on perspective-taking and theory of mind. There is a strong association between theory of mind deficit and parental role dysfunction.
Alcohol use disorders
Impairments in theory of mind, as well as other social-cognitive deficits, are commonly found in people who have alcohol use disorders
Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomin ...
, due to the neurotoxic
Neurotoxicity is a form of toxicity in which a biological, chemical, or physical agent produces an adverse effect on the structure or function of the central and/or peripheral nervous system. It occurs when exposure to a substance – specificall ...
effects of alcohol on the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex
In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14, BA24, BA25, BA32, BA44, BA45, BA46, ...
.
Depression and dysphoria
Individuals in a major depressive episode
A major depressive episode (MDE) is a period characterized by the symptoms of major depressive disorder. Those affected primarily have a depressed mood for at least two weeks or more, and a loss of interest or pleasure in everyday activities. Other ...
, a disorder characterized by social impairment, show deficits in theory of mind decoding. Theory of mind decoding is the ability to use information available in the immediate environment (e.g., facial expression, tone of voice, body posture) to accurately label the mental states of others. The opposite pattern, enhanced theory of mind, is observed in individuals vulnerable to depression, including those individuals with past major depressive disorder (MDD), dysphoric individuals, and individuals with a maternal history of MDD.
Developmental language disorder
Children diagnosed with developmental language disorder
Developmental language disorder (DLD) is identified when a child has problems with language development that continue into school age and beyond. The language problems have a significant impact on everyday social interactions or educational progres ...
(DLD) exhibit much lower scores on reading and writing sections of standardized tests, yet have a normal nonverbal IQ. These language deficits can be any specific deficits in lexical semantics, syntax, or pragmatics, or a combination of multiple problems. Such children often exhibit poorer social skills than normally developing children, and seem to have problems decoding beliefs in others. A recent meta-analysis confirmed that children with DLD have substantially lower scores on theory of mind tasks compared to typically developing children. This strengthens the claim that language development is related to theory of mind.
Brain mechanisms
In neurotypical people
Research on theory of mind in autism
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
led to the view that mentalizing abilities are subserved by dedicated mechanisms that can—in some cases—be impaired while general cognitive function remains largely intact.
Neuroimaging
Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...
research supports this view, demonstrating specific brain regions are consistently engaged during theory of mind tasks. PET
A pet, or companion animal, is an animal kept primarily for a person's company or entertainment rather than as a working animal, livestock, or a laboratory animal. Popular pets are often considered to have attractive appearances, intelligence, ...
research on theory of mind, using verbal and pictorial story comprehension tasks, identifies a set of brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex
In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14, BA24, BA25, BA32, BA44, BA45, BA46, ...
( mPFC), and area around posterior superior temporal sulcus
The superior temporal sulcus (STS) is the sulcus separating the superior temporal gyrus from the middle temporal gyrus in the temporal lobe of the brain. A sulcus (plural sulci) is a deep groove that curves into the largest part of the brain, t ...
(pSTS), and sometimes precuneus
In neuroanatomy, the precuneus is the portion of the superior parietal lobule on the medial surface of each brain hemisphere. It is located in front of the cuneus (the upper portion of the occipital lobe). The precuneus is bounded in front by th ...
and amygdala
The amygdala (; plural: amygdalae or amygdalas; also '; Latin from Greek, , ', 'almond', 'tonsil') is one of two almond-shaped clusters of nuclei located deep and medially within the temporal lobes of the brain's cerebrum in complex verteb ...
/ temporopolar cortex. Research on the neural basis of theory of mind has diversified, with separate lines of research focusing on the understanding of beliefs, intentions, and more complex properties of minds such as psychological traits.
Studies from Rebecca Saxe
Rebecca Saxe is a professor of cognitive neuroscience and associate Dean of Science at MIT. She is an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and a board member of the Center for Open Science. She is known for her research on ...
's lab at MIT, using a false-belief versus false-photograph task contrast aimed at isolating the mentalizing component of the false-belief task, have consistently found activation in mPFC, precuneus, and temporoparietal junction (TPJ), right-lateralized. In particular, it has been proposed that the right TPJ (rTPJ
The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is an area of the brain where the temporal lobe, temporal and parietal lobe, parietal lobes meet, at the posterior end of the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). The TPJ incorporates information from the thalamus a ...
) is selectively involved in representing the beliefs of others. Some debate exists, as the same rTPJ region is consistently activated during spatial reorienting of visual attention; Jean Decety
Jean Decety is an American-French neuroscientist specializing in developmental neuroscience, affective neuroscience, and social neuroscience. His research focuses on the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms underpinning social cognition, p ...
from the University of Chicago and Jason Mitchell from Harvard thus propose that the rTPJ subserves a more general function involved in both false-belief understanding and attentional reorienting, rather than a mechanism specialized for social cognition. However, it is possible that the observation of overlapping regions for representing beliefs and attentional reorienting may simply be due to adjacent, but distinct, neuronal populations that code for each. The resolution of typical fMRI studies may not be good enough to show that distinct/adjacent neuronal populations code for each of these processes. In a study following Decety and Mitchell, Saxe and colleagues used higher-resolution fMRI and showed that the peak of activation for attentional reorienting is approximately 6–10mm above the peak for representing beliefs. Further corroborating that differing populations of neurons may code for each process, they found no similarity in the patterning of fMRI response across space.
Using single-cell recordings in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex
The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC or DMPFC is a section of the prefrontal cortex in some species' brain anatomy. It includes portions of Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA24 and BA32, although some authors identify it specifically wit ...
(dmPFC), researchers at MGH identified neurons that encode information about others' beliefs, which were distinct from self beliefs, across different scenarios in a False-belief task. They further showed high specificity between cells based on the content of the others' beliefs and were able to accurately predict whether these beliefs were true or false. These findings suggest a prominent role of distinct neuronal populations in the dmPFC in theory of Mmind complemented by the TPJ and pSTS.
Functional imaging also illuminates the detection of mental state information in Heider-Simmel-esque animations of moving geometric shapes, which typical humans automatically perceive as social interactions laden with intention and emotion. Three studies found remarkably similar patterns of activation during the perception of such animations versus a random or deterministic motion control: mPFC, pSTS, fusiform face area
The fusiform face area (FFA, meaning spindle-shaped face area) is a part of the human visual system (while also activated in people blind from birth) that is specialized for facial recognition. It is located in the inferior temporal cortex (I ...
(FFA), and amygdala were selectively engaged during the theory of mind condition. Another study presented subjects with an animation of two dots moving with a parameterized degree of intentionality (quantifying the extent to which the dots chased each other), and found that pSTS activation correlated with this parameter.
A separate body of research implicates the posterior superior temporal sulcus in the perception of intentionality in human action. This area is also involved in perceiving biological motion, including body, eye, mouth, and point-light display motion. One study found increased pSTS activation while watching a human lift his hand versus having his hand pushed up by a piston (intentional versus unintentional action). Several studies found increased pSTS activation when subjects perceive a human action that is incongruent with the action expected from the actor's context and inferred intention. Examples would be: a human performing a reach-to-grasp motion on empty space next to an object, versus grasping the object; a human shifting eye gaze toward empty space next to a checkerboard target versus shifting gaze toward the target; an unladen human turning on a light with his knee, versus turning on a light with his knee while carrying a pile of books; and a walking human pausing as he passes behind a bookshelf, versus walking at a constant speed. In these studies, actions in the "congruent" case have a straightforward goal, and are easy to explain in terms of the actor's intention. The incongruent actions, on the other hand, require further explanation (why would someone twist empty space next to a gear?), and apparently demand more processing in the STS. This region is distinct from the temporoparietal area activated during false belief tasks.[ pSTS activation in most of the above studies was largely right-lateralized, following the general trend in neuroimaging studies of social cognition and perception. Also right-lateralized are the TPJ activation during false belief tasks, the STS response to biological motion, and the FFA response to faces.
]Neuropsychological
Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of ...
evidence supports neuroimaging results regarding the neural basis of theory of mind. Studies with patients with a lesion of the frontal lobes
The frontal lobe is the largest of the four major lobes of the brain in mammals, and is located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere (in front of the parietal lobe and the temporal lobe). It is parted from the parietal lobe by a groove betwe ...
and the temporoparietal junction
The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is an area of the brain where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, at the posterior end of the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). The TPJ incorporates information from the thalamus and the limbic system as well ...
of the brain (between the temporal lobe
The temporal lobe is one of the four Lobes of the brain, major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain.
The temporal lobe ...
and parietal lobe
The parietal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The parietal lobe is positioned above the temporal lobe and behind the frontal lobe and central sulcus.
The parietal lobe integrates sensory informa ...
) report that they have difficulty with some theory of mind tasks. This shows that theory of mind abilities are associated with specific parts of the human brain. However, the fact that the medial prefrontal cortex
In mammalian brain anatomy, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) covers the front part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. The PFC contains the Brodmann areas BA8, BA9, BA10, BA11, BA12, BA13, BA14, BA24, BA25, BA32, BA44, BA45, BA46, ...
and temporoparietal junction are necessary for theory of mind tasks does not imply that these regions are specific to that function.[ TPJ and mPFC may subserve more general functions necessary for Theory of Mind.
Research by ]Vittorio Gallese
Vittorio Gallese is professor of Psychobiology at the University of Parma, Italy, and was professor in Experimental Aesthetics at the University of London, UK (2016-2018). He is an expert in neurophysiology, cognitive neuroscience, social neurosci ...
, Luciano Fadiga, and Giacomo Rizzolatti
Giacomo Rizzolatti (born 28 April 1937) is an Italian neurophysiologist who works at the University of Parma. Born in Kyiv, UkSSR, he is the Senior Scientist of the research team that discovered mirror neurons in the frontal and parietal cortex ...
shows that some sensorimotor neuron
A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. N ...
s, referred to as mirror neuron
A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons hav ...
s and first discovered in the premotor cortex
The premotor cortex is an area of the motor cortex lying within the frontal lobe of the brain just anterior to the primary motor cortex. It occupies part of Brodmann's area 6. It has been studied mainly in primates, including monkeys and humans. ...
of rhesus monkey
The rhesus macaque (''Macaca mulatta''), colloquially rhesus monkey, is a species of Old World monkey. There are between six and nine recognised subspecies that are split between two groups, the Chinese-derived and the Indian-derived. Generally b ...
s, may be involved in action understanding. Single-electrode recording revealed that these neurons fired when a monkey performed an action, as well as when the monkey viewed another agent performing the same action. fMRI
Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...
studies with human participants show brain regions (assumed to contain mirror neurons) that are active when one person sees another person's goal-directed action. These data led some authors to suggest that mirror neurons may provide the basis for theory of mind in the brain, and to support simulation theory of mind reading.
There is also evidence against a link between mirror neurons and theory of mind. First, macaque monkeys have mirror neurons but do not seem to have a 'human-like' capacity to understand theory of mind and belief. Second, fMRI
Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...
studies of theory of mind typically report activation in the mPFC, temporal poles, and TPJ or STS, but those brain areas are not part of the mirror neuron system. Some investigators, like developmental psychologist Andrew Meltzoff
Andrew N. Meltzoff (born February 9, 1950) is an American psychologist and an internationally recognized expert on infant and child development. His discoveries about infant imitation greatly advanced the scientific understanding of early cognition ...
and neuroscientist Jean Decety
Jean Decety is an American-French neuroscientist specializing in developmental neuroscience, affective neuroscience, and social neuroscience. His research focuses on the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms underpinning social cognition, p ...
, believe that mirror neurons merely facilitate learning through imitation and may provide a precursor to the development of theory of mind. Others, like philosopher Shaun Gallagher
Shaun Gallagher is an American philosopher known for his work on embodied cognition, social cognition, agency and the philosophy of psychopathology. Since 2011 he has held the Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence in Philosophy at the ...
, suggest that mirror-neuron activation, on a number of counts, fails to meet the definition of simulation as proposed by the simulation theory of mindreading.
In autism
Several neuroimaging studies have looked at the neural basis for theory of mind impairment in subjects with Asperger syndrome
Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in Interpersonal relationship, social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and re ...
and high-functioning autism
High-functioning autism (HFA) is an autism classification where a person exhibits no intellectual disability, but may exhibit deficits in communication, emotion recognition and expression, and social interaction. HFA is not included in either t ...
(HFA). The first PET study of theory of mind in autism (also the first neuroimaging study using a task-induced activation paradigm in autism) replicated a prior study in neurotypical individuals, which employed a story-comprehension task. This study found displaced and diminished mPFC activation in subjects with autism. However, because the study used only six subjects with autism, and because the spatial resolution of PET imaging is relatively poor, these results should be considered preliminary.
A subsequent fMRI study scanned normally developing adults and adults with HFA while performing a "reading the mind in the eyes" task: viewing a photo of a human's eyes and choosing which of two adjectives better describes the person's mental state, versus a gender discrimination control. The authors found activity in orbitofrontal cortex
The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a prefrontal cortex region in the frontal lobes of the brain which is involved in the cognitive process of decision-making. In non-human primates it consists of the association cortex areas Brodmann area 11, 12 ...
, STS, and amygdala in normal subjects, and found less amygdala activation and abnormal STS activation in subjects with autism.
A more recent PET study looked at brain activity in individuals with HFA and Asperger syndrome while viewing Heider-Simmel animations (see above) versus a random motion control. In contrast to normally-developing subjects, those with autism showed little STS or FFA activation, and less mPFC and amygdala activation. Activity in extrastriate regions V3 and LO was identical across the two groups, suggesting intact lower-level visual processing in the subjects with autism. The study also reported less functional connectivity between STS and V3 in the autism group. However decreased temporal correlation between activity in STS and V3 would be expected simply from the lack of an evoked response in STS to intent-laden animations in subjects with autism. A more informative analysis would be to compute functional connectivity after regressing out evoked responses from all-time series.
A subsequent study, using the incongruent/congruent gaze-shift paradigm described above, found that in high-functioning adults with autism, posterior STS (pSTS) activation was undifferentiated while they watched a human shift gaze toward a target and then toward adjacent empty space. The lack of additional STS processing in the incongruent state may suggest that these subjects fail to form an expectation of what the actor should do given contextual information, or that feedback about the violation of this expectation doesn't reach STS. Both explanations involve an impairment or deficit in the ability to link eye gaze shifts with intentional explanations. This study also found a significant anticorrelation between STS activation in the incongruent-congruent contrast and social subscale score on the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised The Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) is a structured interview conducted with the parents of individuals who have been referred for the evaluation of possible autism or autism spectrum disorders. The interview, used by researchers and cl ...
, but not scores on the other subscales.
An fMRI study demonstrated that the right temporoparietal junction
The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is an area of the brain where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, at the posterior end of the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). The TPJ incorporates information from the thalamus and the limbic system as well ...
(rTPJ) of higher-functioning adults with autism was not more selectively activated for mentalizing judgments when compared to physical judgments about self and other. rTPJ selectivity for mentalizing was also related to individual variation on clinical measures of social impairment: individuals whose rTPJ was increasingly more active for mentalizing compared to physical judgments were less socially impaired, while those who showed little to no difference in response to mentalizing or physical judgments were the most socially impaired. This evidence builds on work in typical development that suggests rTPJ is critical for representing mental state information, irrespective of whether it is about oneself or others. It also points to an explanation at the neural level for the pervasive mind-blindness
Mind-blindness, mindblindness or mind blindness is a theory initially developed in 1990 that explains Autism, autistic people as having a lack or developmental delay of theory of mind (ToM), meaning they are unable to attribute mental states to ot ...
difficulties in autism that are evident throughout the lifespan.
In schizophrenia
The brain regions associated with theory of mind include the superior temporal gyrus
The superior temporal gyrus (STG) is one of three (sometimes two) gyri in the temporal lobe of the human brain, which is located laterally to the head, situated somewhat above the external ear.
The superior temporal gyrus is bounded by:
* the lat ...
(STS), the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), the medial prefrontal cortex ( mPFC), the precuneus, and the amygdala. The reduced activity in the mPFC of individuals with schizophrenia is associated with theory of mind deficit and may explain impairments in social function among people with schizophrenia. Increased neural activity in mPFC is related to better perspective-taking, emotion management, and increased social functioning. Disrupted brain activities in areas related to theory of mind may increase social stress or disinterest in social interaction, and contribute to the social dysfunction associated with schizophrenia.
Practical validity
Group member average scores of theory of mind abilities, measured with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RME), are possibly drivers of successful group performance. High group average scores on the RME are correlated with the collective intelligence
Collective intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence (GI) that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. The term appears in sociobiology, politic ...
factor ''c'', defined as a group's ability to perform a wide range of mental tasks, a group intelligence measure similar to the ''g'' factor for general individual intelligence. RME is a theory of mind test for adults that shows sufficient test-retest reliability and constantly differentiates control groups from individuals with functional autism or Asperger syndrome
Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in Interpersonal relationship, social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and re ...
. It is one of the most widely accepted and well-validated tests for theory of mind abilities within adults.
Evolution
The evolutionary origin of theory of mind remains obscure. While many theories make claims about its role in the development of human language and social cognition, few of them specify in detail any evolutionary neurophysiological precursors.
One theory claims that theory of mind has its roots in two defensive reactions—immobilization stress and tonic immobility
Apparent death, colloquially known as playing dead, feigning death, or playing possum, is a behavior in which animals take on the appearance of being dead. It is an immobile state most often triggered by a predatory attack and can be found in a ...
—which are implicated in the handling of stressful encounters and also figure prominently in mammalian childrearing practices. Their combined effect seems capable of producing many of the hallmarks of theory of mind, such as eye-contact, gaze-following, inhibitory control, and intentional attributions.
Non-human
An open question is whether non-human animals have a genetic endowment and social
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives from ...
environment that allows them to acquire a theory of mind like human children do. This is a contentious issue because of the difficulty of inferring from animal behavior
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objective ...
the existence of thinking
In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, an ...
or of particular thoughts, or the existence of a concept of self
The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhood ...
or self-awareness
In philosophy of self, self-awareness is the experience of one's own personality or individuality. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifesty ...
, consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
, and qualia
In philosophy of mind, qualia ( or ; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () ...
. One difficulty with non-human studies of theory of mind is the lack of sufficient numbers of naturalistic observations, giving insight into what the evolutionary pressures might be on a species' development of theory of mind.
Non-human research still has a major place in this field. It is especially useful in illuminating which nonverbal behaviors signify components of theory of mind, and in pointing to possible stepping points in the evolution of that aspect of social cognition. While it is difficult to study human-like theory of mind and mental states in species of whose potential mental states we have an incomplete understanding, researchers can focus on simpler components of more complex capabilities. For example, many researchers focus on animals' understanding of intention, gaze, perspective, or knowledge (of what another being has seen). A study that looked at understanding of intention in orangutans, chimpanzees, and children showed that all three species understood the difference between accidental and intentional acts.
Individuals exhibit theory of mind by extrapolating another's internal mental states from their observable behavior. So one challenge in this line of research is to distinguish this from more run-of-the-mill stimulus-response learning, with the other's observable behavior being the stimulus.
Recently, most non-human theory of mind research has focused on monkeys and great apes, who are of most interest in the study of the evolution of human social cognition. Other studies relevant to attributions theory of mind have been conducted using plover
Plovers ( , ) are a widely distributed group of wading birds belonging to the subfamily Charadriinae.
Description
There are about 66 species in the subfamily, most of them called "plover" or "dotterel". The closely related lapwing subfa ...
s and dogs, which show preliminary evidence of understanding attention—one precursor of theory of mind—in others.
There has been some controversy over the interpretation of evidence purporting to show theory of mind ability—or inability—in animals. For example, Povinelli ''et al.'' presented chimpanzees with the choice of two experimenters from whom to request food: one who had seen where food was hidden, and one who, by virtue of one of a variety of mechanisms (having a bucket or bag over his head, a blindfold over his eyes, or being turned away from the baiting) does not know, and can only guess. They found that the animals failed in most cases to differentially request food from the "knower". By contrast, Hare, Call, and Tomasello found that subordinate chimpanzees were able to use the knowledge state of dominant rival chimpanzees to determine which container of hidden food they approached. William Field and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Emily Sue Savage-Rumbaugh (born August 16, 1946) is a psychologist and primatologist most known for her work with two bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha, investigating their linguistic and cognitive abilities using lexigrams and computer-based keyboa ...
believe that bonobos have developed theory of mind, and cite their communications with a captive bonobo, Kanzi
Kanzi (born October 28, 1980), also known by the lexigram (from the character 太), is a male bonobo who has been the subject of several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the ...
, as evidence.
In one experiment, ravens (''Corvus corax
The common raven (''Corvus corax'') is a large all-black passerine bird. It is the most widely distributed of all corvids, found across the Northern Hemisphere. It is a raven known by many names at the subspecies level; there are at least ei ...
'') took into account visual access of unseen conspecifics. The researchers argued that "ravens can generalize from their own perceptual experience to infer the possibility of being seen".
Evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Krupenye studied the existence of theory of mind, and particularly false beliefs, in non-human primates.
Keren Haroush
Keren may refer to:
Places Inhabited places
* Keren, Eritrea, a city in Eritrea, formerly called Cheren
* Keren Subregion, Anseba region, Eritrea
Other places
* House of Keren, a historical house in Taganrog, Rostov Oblast, Russia
* Keren, a ...
and Ziv Williams outlined the case for a group of neuron
A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. N ...
s in primates' brains that uniquely predicted the choice selection of their interacting partner. These primates' neurons, located in the anterior cingulate cortex
In the human brain, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is the frontal part of the cingulate cortex that resembles a "collar" surrounding the frontal part of the corpus callosum. It consists of Brodmann areas 24, 32, and 33.
It is involved ...
of rhesus monkeys, were observed using single-unit recording while the monkeys played a variant of the iterative prisoner's dilemma
The Prisoner's Dilemma is an example of a game analyzed in game theory. It is also a thought experiment that challenges two completely rational agents to a dilemma: cooperate with their partner for mutual reward, or betray their partner ("defe ...
game. By identifying cells that represent the yet unknown intentions of a game partner, Haroush & Williams' study supports the idea that theory of mind may be a fundamental and generalized process, and suggests that ''anterior cingulate cortex
In the human brain, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is the frontal part of the cingulate cortex that resembles a "collar" surrounding the frontal part of the corpus callosum. It consists of Brodmann areas 24, 32, and 33.
It is involved ...
'' neurons may act to complement the function of mirror neurons during social interchange
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives from ...
.
See also
* Attribution bias
In psychology, an attribution bias or attributional bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the systematic errors made when people evaluate or try to find reasons for their own and others' behaviors.Kelley, H.H. (1967). Attribution theory in soci ...
* Cephalopod intelligence
Cephalopod intelligence is a measure of the cognitive ability of the cephalopod Class (biology), class of molluscs.
Intelligence is generally defined as the process of acquiring, storing, retrieving, combining, comparing, and recontextualizing ...
* Cetacean intelligence Cetacean intelligence is the cognitive ability of the infraorder Cetacea of mammals. This order includes whales, porpoises, and dolphins.
Brain size
Brain size was previously considered a major indicator of the intelligence of an animal. However, m ...
* Eliminative materialism
Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that majority of the mental states in folk psychology do not exist. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coheren ...
* Empathy
Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, co ...
* Grounding in communication
Grounding in communication is a concept proposed by Herbert H. Clark and Susan E. Brennan. It comprises the collection of "mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, and mutual assumptions" that is essential for communication between two people. Successf ...
* Intentional stance
The intentional stance is a term coined by philosopher Daniel Dennett for the level of abstraction in which we view the behavior of an entity in terms of mental properties. It is part of a theory of mental content proposed by Dennett, which provid ...
* Joint attention
Joint attention or shared attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It is achieved when one individual alerts another to an object by means of eye-gazing, pointing or other verbal or non-verbal indications. An individual gaze ...
* Mental body
The mental body (the mind) is one of the subtle bodies in esoteric philosophies, in some religious teachings and in New Age thought. It is understood as a sort of body made up of thoughts, just as the emotional body consists of emotions and the p ...
* Mentalization
In psychology, mentalization is the ability to understand the mental state – of oneself or others – that underlies overt behaviour.
Mentalization can be seen as a form of imaginative mental activity that lets us perceive and interpret human be ...
* Mini-SEA
The mini-SEA (mini-Social cognition & Emotional Assessment) is a neuropsychological battery aiming to evaluate the impairment of the social and emotional cognition. Developed by Maxime Bertoux in 2012, the mini-SEA has been preferentially designe ...
* Origin of language
The origin of language (spoken and signed, as well as language-related technological systems such as writing), its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study th ...
* Perspective-taking Perspective-taking is the act of perceiving a situation or understanding a concept from an alternative point of view, such as that of another individual.
A vast amount of scientific literature suggests that perspective-taking is crucial to human de ...
* Quantum mind
The quantum mind or quantum consciousness is a group of hypotheses proposing that classical mechanics alone cannot explain consciousness, positing instead that quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as entanglement and superposition, may play an imp ...
* Relational frame theory
Relational frame theory (RFT) is a psychological theory of human language, cognition, and behaviour. It was developed originally by Steven C. Hayes of University of Nevada, Reno and has been extended in research, notably by Dermot Barnes-Holmes ...
* Self-awareness
In philosophy of self, self-awareness is the experience of one's own personality or individuality. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifesty ...
* Social neuroscience
Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding the relationship between social experiences and biological systems. Humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than solitary. As such, ''Homo sapiens'' create emerg ...
* Embodied cognition
Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of an organism's entire body. Sensory and motor systems are seen as fundamentally integrated with cognitive processing. The cognit ...
* Space mapping
The space mapping methodology for modeling and design optimization of engineering systems was first discovered by John Bandler in 1993. It uses relevant existing knowledge to speed up model generation and design optimization of a system. The know ...
* ''The Mind of an Ape
''The Mind of an Ape'' is a 1983 book by David Premack and his wife Ann James Premack. The authors argue that it is possible to teach language to (non-human) great apes. They write: "We now know that someone who comprehends speech must know languag ...
''
* Turing test
The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine's ability to artificial intelligence, exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing propos ...
* Type physicalism
Type physicalism (also known as reductive materialism, type identity theory, mind–brain identity theory and identity theory of mind) is a physicalist theory in the philosophy of mind. It asserts that mental events can be grouped into types, and ...
* Interpersonal accuracy
References
Further reading
* Excerpts taken from: Davis, E. (2007) "Mental Verbs in Nicaraguan Sign Language and the Role of Language in Theory of Mind." Undergraduate senior thesis, Barnard College, Columbia University.
External links
Eye Test Simon Baron Cohen
The Computational Theory of Mind
The Identity Theory of Mind
Sally-Anne and Smarties tests
Functional Contextualism
Theory of Mind
article in the ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''IEP'') is a scholarly online encyclopedia, dealing with philosophy, philosophical topics, and philosophers. The IEP combines open access publication with peer reviewed publication of original pape ...
''
{{philosophy of mind
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