Theory Of Mind Analysis

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Introduction The ability to understand that other people can have different information than oneself and thinks different from us is something that can seem very easy to us. In reality it takes quite a few years after birth for this kind of thinking, known as Theory of Mind, to develop. Theory of mind is used to predict how other people will behave and requires a second order of thinking similar to meta-cognition, meaning thinking about thinking. Theory of mind essentially refers to the concepts someone has about mental activity (Bjorklund, 2012, p. 285). A child generally develops this ability/concept around four to five years of age. Theory of mind is important because it is necessary to understand the social world around oneself. Theory …show more content…
Twenty-three of the twenty-seven normal children passed the belief question and of the down-syndrome children twelve of the fourteen passed. On the other hand Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith (1985) found that the majority (sixteen of twenty) of the autistic children failed the belief question. That means that sixteen of the twenty autistic children did not understand that Sally did not see Anne take the marble and put it in her box and therefore does not know it’s there. The experimenter’s findings mean that the majority of autistic children do not have theory of mind and thus do not have a second order level of thinking (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith …show more content…
These regions included clusters in the motor and premotor cortex, the middle occipital region, and the cuneus (which is in the occipital lobe). The strongest correlation, however, was found in the other two regions, which were the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex and right temporal-parietal juncture. What these findings point to is that theory of mind can come with the maturation of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex and right temporal-parietal juncture (Sabbagh, Bowman, Evraire, & Ito, 2009). Based on these finding from Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith (1985) and Sabbagh, Bowman, Evraire, & Ito (2009) this study proposes that a child around the age of three or four may not have theory of mind. In relation to that, this study also proposes that a three year old will answer a false-belief question wrong and thus not have theory of mind. The hypothesis of this study is that at the age of three a boy will not have a concept of mental activity and therefore will not have achieved theory of mind. This will be tested by the use of a simple false-belief task.

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