Authors' Introduction
- ... It’s not until the age of four or five that children develop this flexible ‘theory of mind’: the ability to reason about others’ thoughts and feelings. This includes understanding that people’s beliefs can be decoupled from reality (sometimes to comic effect). This ability to ‘read’ other people’s minds is crucial for social interaction. Which direction is that car going to turn? The indicator lets you infer the driver’s intention. Does that attractive acquaintance like you? Their eye contact and flick of the hair might give you a sign. Are we communicating about this topic well? To answer that question, we have to imagine what the reader will need to know in order to follow our train of thought.
- Theory of mind has been a topic of intense study since the 1980s, when psychologists first developed ‘false belief’ tasks. These tasks involve asking children to reason about other people’s behaviour in scenarios where those people don’t have full information. For example, Mum leaves her car keys on the kitchen table; when she is gone, Dad puts the car keys in his pocket. Mum comes back to the kitchen – where will she look for her keys? Children under the age of four predict that Mum will look in Dad’s pocket; after all, that’s where the keys are. However, older children understand that Mum will expect the keys to be on the table, and that Dad might be in trouble.
- An enduring question, one for which we and other scientists are still seeking answers, is what happens around that age to make this critical ability possible. How, exactly, do we become ‘mind readers’?
Authors' Conclusion
- Insights into how theory of mind emerges are important from a practical perspective. The development of this ability to reason about other minds can be disrupted by environmental factors, such as a lack of opportunity for social interaction and language development, and by neurodivergence, which is sometimes associated with difficulty in social reasoning. To support children in developing theory of mind, experts might usefully target its developmental building blocks. That could include focusing, in part, on supporting a child’s self-reflection and self-control. For example, while some researchers have sought to help children develop theory of mind with the aid of thought bubbles that illustrate story characters’ thoughts and beliefs, a more accessible starting point for many children might be encouraging them to engage in introspection – perhaps by externalising their own thought processes in this concrete way (eg, within bubbles).
- However, it is crucial to consider whether the developmental foundations of this skill set are universal. Researchers are currently pulling together to address a pervasive cultural bias in developmental psychology: the majority of information we have on child development is based on studies with Western populations. In Western societies, people tend to consider a principal goal of child development to be gaining independence and self-reliance – becoming the ‘main character’ in one’s own life. But, in much of the world, a principal goal is to support a child to be interdependent, to fit in with their social surroundings to sustain the greater good. For example, in Japan, developing omoiyari – a concept similar to empathy and sympathy – is a key goal of child-rearing.
- Perhaps surprisingly, given this social focus, research suggests that children growing up in ‘interdependent’ societies tend to develop these abilities differently, demonstrating self-control earlier but theory of mind later than their Western counterparts. This apparent difference could be because standard theory of mind tasks have been developed using a Western lens, focusing on an individual’s intent as the key driver of behaviour. However, it could also be due to substantial cross-cultural variation in the way people mentally represent self and other.
- Findings from developmental research, including other work we’ve done, indicate that there could be significant cultural differences in the stepping stones to theory of mind. In this research, we asked children in Scotland and Japan to complete the tasks described previously. In both groups, we again found that introspective ability was related to self-control. However, neither ability was strongly related to Japanese children’s theory of mind, suggesting that the developmental precursors may differ between independent and interdependent societies.
- If this cross-cultural finding holds in future research, how might we explain the difference? It is possible that in interdependent societies, it does not take (as much) self-reflection or self-control to be able to consider another person’s thoughts and feelings, since other people’s perspectives are always closer to the forefront of thought. In cultures with an interdependent focus, children may follow a different set of developmental stepping stones to theory of mind, perhaps through the scaffolding of shared perspectives of reality. In other contexts, however – including in the independence-focused West – a child’s ability to guess at other people’s thoughts and feelings is likely to begin with introspection on their own.
Author Narrative
- Josephine Ross is a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Her research focuses on the development of self-awareness, and the intersection of this development with social cognition and functioning throughout the lifespan.
- Martin Doherty is an associate professor of developmental psychology at the University of East Anglia, UK. His research focuses on the development of theory of mind.
Notes
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