Family Context and Theory of Mind Development

Representational Development and Theory-of-mind Computations

A child-centred exploration of the relevance of family and friends to theory of mind development.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is said to develop at around 4 years old. But some studies suggest it develops considerably earlier than this, with others suggesting it develops much later. Although several recent studies have found that social factors (like gender, family size, number of siblings, and number of friends) can impact on ToM, other studies contradict those findings. We wondered whether addre...

Modeling the Development of Theory of Mind

Recently, there have been two process-based computational cognitive models of theory of mind (ToM) (Hiatt & Trafton, 2010; Arslan, Taatgen, & Verbrugge, 2013). Ours (Hiatt & Trafton, 2010) models the development of ToM cognitive mechanisms, such as simulation, and focuses on first-order false belief tasks; the other (Arslan et al., 2013) learns to perform ToM using the activation of declarative...

Non-linearities in Theory-of-Mind Development

Research on Theory-of-Mind (ToM) has mainly focused on ages of core ToM development. This article follows a quantitative approach focusing on the level of ToM understanding on a measurement scale, the ToM Storybooks, in 324 typically developing children between 3 and 11 years of age. It deals with the eventual occurrence of developmental non-linearities in ToM functioning, using smoothing techn...

Theory of mind development can withstand compromised episodic memory development.

As humans, we are consciously aware of unobservable mental states, including our own during episodic memory and other people's by having a "theory of mind" (ToM). Episodic memory and ToM are closely related: they share a neural substrate and emerge close in time in ontogenetic development. This relationship is central to prominent child development and cognitive neuroscience theories of ToM, bu...