Theory of mind - Smarties task and Sally-Anne Task video transcript

Children at play with one of their favourite activities. The water provides plenty of opportunities for learning and fun.

As they grow up and take part in activities like these, one of the things that children need to be able to do is represent internally the complexity of their social worlds. This involves not just being able to predict how the world of objects works, but also how other people are likely to react in various situations.

Psychologists have recently realised that in order to do this, the young child needs an idea about how people's minds work. What they have begun to call a theory of mind. And research over the last decade has suggested how this seems to appear quite rapidly and suddenly between the ages of three and four years.

The great thing about Theory of Mind is that it is a nature conceptual tool that allows us to step outside of the bounds of the directly perceivable, stimulus circumstances and allow for predicting and explaining other people's behaviour. In a wide variety of novel ways.

Psychologists argue that we can see the difference between having and not having a theory of mind in simple experiments called false belief tasks. First of all, the child has to establish the fact that their own belief is false. Then they have to put themselves inside the mind of another child in order to predict that child's beliefs.

Now Elizabeth. What do you think is inside this box? Smarties. Have a look inside. Let me help you. Ready. Go. What's that? Pencils. Oh right, shall we put them back in the box? Can you remember what's inside the box? Pencils. What did you think was in the box? Pencils. Did you? I’m going to show this box to Jane in a minute. What will Jane think is in the box? Pencils. Good.

After you’ve mopped up the child’s tears because they expected to get sweets you ask them two questions. One is a reality question to make sure they remember what's inside. So what's inside the box? And then you can ask them one of two false belief questions. One is about their own previous belief. What did you think was inside the box? And the second question is your friend John is going to come and look at the box in a minute? What will John think is in the box?

Like many children of this age, when asked what another child will think, Elizabeth simply projects what she now believes herself about the tube of sweets. She doesn't recognise that the other child exists as an independent thinking being. And presented with another task of this kind, she acts in much the same way.

Right now. This is Sammy. And this is Ann. Now Sally comes in with her marble. Sally puts her marble into the basket. And goes out. Ann comes and gets the marble. She puts the marble in the box. Here comes Sally. Here comes Sally. Now. Where will Sally look for the marble? There you go Sally. You got it for her.

But for another child Connor, the outcome is somewhat different.

Sally comes in to find her marble. Where will Sally look for her marble? And where was the marble in the beginning? Good. Shall we look for the marble now? Where did you say the marble is? Have a look. That’s it. Good.

The joy of this procedure is that you can ask two control questions to make sure that they understand what the task is about. You can ask them a memory question which is where was the object at the beginning and of course the answer that is at location A. And you can ask them a second reality question, which is where is the object now. Which of course is location B.

To be able to work out where Sally will think the marble is, Connor has to be able to simultaneously hold, or in psychological terms, mentally represent, two distinct points of view in his mind. In research studies, most 3 year olds seem unable to do this.

Before the age, about four our children do not use the other persons mental representations as independent entities. They do not realise that individuals can act upon misrepresentation.

Most 4 year olds get the answers to these questions right. But why? What happens between the ages of three and four?

Theory of mind - Smarties task and Sally-Anne Task video

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