Precursors to theory of mind? Deciding whether something is animate or inanimate

• Potential Cues to animacy– Action at a distance

– Self-propelled

– Biological shape/texture

– Eyes

– Contingency

– Biological Motion• Infants detect & prefer human movement over non-human

e.g. Point light Displays…

From Johnson et al. (1998)

“Gaze” Following of Contingent Agents

Pattern Perception: 3-4 mth-olds recognize human motion

• Point light displays contain minimal information but infants can discriminate human walking from control stimuli, and prefer humans(Bertenthal, 1993)

Infants Differentiate People (or Mental Agents) from other Objects

• they aren’t surprised if people move without making contact but are for inanimate objects

• when an object moves out of sight, the infants try to reach towards its place of disappearance; when a person moves out of sight, the infants vocalize

• What does this mean?

• Infants seem to construe people as somehow “special”, different from objects •BUT that doesn’t mean that the infants understand anything about the other person’s mind

Woodward, 1998

Goals, Desires, and Intentions

Goals, Desires, and Intentions

• 5-month-old infants expect the human arm to reach towards the same OBJECT, not in the same direction• If the arm is mechanical, infants expect reaching in the same direction

What does this demonstrate? •By 5 months, infants expect human behavior to be goal-oriented

 

   

• Goal-directed objects? (Csibra and Gergely, 1999)–Babies habituate to the following video clip

Goals, Desires, and Intentions

 

   

Goals, Desires, and Intentions

– Nine- and twelve-month-old babies look longer when the ball jumps without an obstacle

– It does not make sense for the ball to jump if the goal is simply to reach a position (it violates rational action)

 

   

An Early Understanding of Emotional Valence

 

   

An Early Understanding of Emotional Valence

– 12-month-old babies look longer when an agent (a shape) approaches an object that “hindered” it previously but not one that “helped” it previously

–9-month-olds can do it too if you add eyes to the shapes

• 18 month-old infants will imitate intentions of actors, even when they don’t see the completed action. They do not imitate machines.

• Understand others can have different desires (Brocolli vs. Cracker Study)

Early Theory of Mind

Knowledge

What do young children understand about knowledge?

• Experience/Familiarity leads to knowing (Birch & Bloom, 2002)

• Being present leads to knowing (toy on high shelf study, O’Neill)

• Looking leads to knowing (Pillow, 1990)

KnowledgeBut, 3-year-olds don’t seemed to understand that

we acquire different information through our different senses

e.g. Red Ball vs. Blue ball: Who will know? Someone who looks or feels? (O’Neill, Flavell, and Astington).

Acquiring an adult theory of mind is a gradual/continuous process. There is both important theory of mind development BEFORE children pass the false belief tasks and AFTER

(e.g. an interpretive theory of mind)

•There is more to passing the false belief task than theory of mind.

•There is more to theory of mind than passing the false belief task

So…