Theory of mind

Lies differ in their complexity and sophistication. Leekham ( 1992) proposed three levels o f lying. She described the first level as manipulating the behaviour o f another person without the intention (or even the idea) o f inlluencing the oth e r's beliefs. Leekham suggested that small children who may deny misbehaviour to avoid punishment or falsely claim to have done something good to get a reward tell such lies, fhese are generally ‘learned’ strategies, em ployed without understanding that saying something untrue can affect the listener’s beliefs. These simple lies often fail because small children tend to lie at the wrong time or neglect im portant issues such as covering their tracks. The second level o f lying takes into account the liar’s awareness o f the listener's beliefs. The liar must now keep in mind that the false statement may manipulate the listener's beliefs, that the listener will evaluate the statement as being true or false, and that the listener will, on the basis o f the new belief (if the lie has been accepted), e\ aluate future statements in the light o f the new belief. Liars who have reached this level o l'd e \ elopmental sophistication are much m ore effective at deception than the first level liars. On reaching the third level o f lying competence, the liar recognises not only the effects o f the words spoken on the listener’s beliefs but also that the listener may be evaluating the liar's own beliefs about the words - in other words, how sincere the liar is. Thus, skilled lying involves convincing the listener that the speaker believes what he or she is saying and has a truthful intention. A skilled liar also continuously ‘reads’ the listener’s non-\ crbal behaviour and, in response to feedback from the listener, adjusts both verbal and non-verbal com m unications to be more credible. This skill markedly enhances o n e 's capacity to manipulate other people’s beliefs and behaviours.

Children’s capacity to develop lying skills has been experimentally studied with connection to the theory o f mind. Theory o f mind is a capacity to be developed through interpersonal relations between the child and caregivers. It is a process b\ which the child conceives o f h im se lf as having a mind different from others in so far as he has his own feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and so on, and other people have theirs.

Premack and W o o d ru ff (1978) argued that acts o f deception w ould be a good indicator o f the presence o f a TO M in the deceiver, on the ground that deecpiion involves the manipulation o f others’ behaviour by influencing their beliefs about reality. They state that to hold a theory o f mind is to subscribe to a special sort o f e\p lan ato r\' framework, according to which we construe people in terms o f internal mental states such as their beliefs, desires, intentions and emotions.

They gave chimpanzees problem s to solve concerning the plight o f the human actor represented. Each video showed the actor engaged in a particular form o f behaviour. For example, shivering in front o f an unlit heater. The chimps were presented with two pictures, only one o f which represented the solution to the problem (e.g. a lit wick for the heater). The fact that these trained chimpanzees tended to choose the pictures reflecting solutions to the actor’s problems was taken as evidence that the> understood the actor’s purpose or intention in each situation, and that the solution would fullll this intention. I f this were true, then presumably it would imply an extremely complex and sensitive understanding o f others. It seems to go beyond the le\ el o f tracking observable behavioural contingencies to the level o f inference from a theor\ about minds (that control behaviour).

Essentially, Premack and W oodruff were describing ‘folk psyehologx the way in which people explain behaviour o f others by referring to what these others might think or feel. Folk psychology also goes by the name o f ‘b elief desire psyeholog\ as these two com ponents o f mind seem to capture its essence. Thus if one knows what a person desires, and w hat she believes about the object o f her desire, one has sufficient knowledge to make an educated guess about how she will behave. For example, if 1 know that you desire chocolate, and that you believe that there is chocolate in a nearb\ cupboard, then the reasonable prediction w ould be that you would go to the cupboard to get the chocolate. In the case o f the above experiments one might explain the chim panzees’ performances by saying that they understood the actor’s desire to be warm.

To generalise, our everyday understanding o f people in these terms has a notable coherence. Since an actor has certain beliefs and desires he or she engages in certain intentional actions, the success o f which result in certain emotional reactions. The supposition is that this understanding guides all social action and interaction.

W ellman (1990) claimed that there are two intuitive aspects o f o u r u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f the mental states o f self and other: ontological and causal. T h e o n t o l o g i c a l aspect picks out mental contents, states, and processes as a dom ain to consider, and distinguishes that mental world from the real world o f physical objects or b e h a \ ioural processes. The essence o f the ontological aspect, therefore, is our understanding o f the difference between thoughts or ideas on the one hand and objects or b e h a \ i our on the other. For example a thought about a house is not the same sort o f thing as a p i c t u r e o f a house. The contents o f states o f the m ind are internal, mental, and s ub j e c t i v e , w h e r e a s the contents and states o f the world are external, substantial, and objecti\ e. 1 tie e s s e n c e o f the causal aspect is that states o f the mind (thoughts, beliefs, ideas, emotions, and desires) are also causally related to that physical-behavioural world. Causal i n t l u e n c e g o e s from the mind to the world and from the world to the mind. Mental states c a u s e a c t i o n s in the world and the world causes mental states.

Developmental researchers have been occupied by the question o f w hen children first appear com petent to hold to any such beliefs about beliefs, and what should count as evidence for or against such an emerging T O M .

Dennett (1978) argued that understanding false belief might c o n s t i t u t e a discriminative test o f a TO M , in that it becomes possible to distinguish u n a m b i g u o u s l y between the child’s (true) b elief and the child’s awareness o f someone else's dilTerent (false) belief. W im m er and Perner (1983) published a seminal study o f th re e - a n d four-year-olds’ understanding o f false belief. In the task, a character named M a x i put some chocolate in a cupboard, and then left the scene. In M a x i’s absence, his mother m o v e d the chocolate to a new location, a drawer. Adults, and even 4-year-olds, u n d e r s t a n d that M a x i ’s belief, that his chocolate is in the cupboard, is now false, since it has now b e e n m o \ ed without his knowledge. Three-year-olds, however, do not seem to u n d e r s t a n d that p e o p l e can have false beliefs. For example, they claim that Maxi thinks the c h o c o l a t e is in its new location, the drawer, even though he has no access to that fact. M a n y studies have replicated these findings (Flavell et ah, 1990; Gopnik and S l a u g h t e r . 1991; Li Hard and Flavell, 1992).

Chandler, Fritz and Hala (1989) criticised W im m er and Perner's procedure on the ground that their task conflated the active capacity to entertain beliefs about beliefs with a

different ability to com m ent verbally upon this understanding, and that the task was tortuous and more computationally complex than necessary. I hey dc\ eloped a more direct study o f 2-4 year old children’s abilities to ^ d ece p tiv e !). A treasure was hidden by a puppet, which left visible tracks to the hiding place. The child’s task was to make it difficult for another person to find the treasure. They have not found any significant relations between age and use o f different deceptive strategies, whereas the most sophisticated strategy was not restricted to older children, and the oldei and more verbal o f these groups were better able to justify their deceptive acts.

Sodian, Taylor, Harris and Perner (1991) replicated the findings that sueh young children could be brought to wipe out telltale tracks, but only after m a s s i\e prompting. They noted that the mere enjoyment in the activity o f wiping out tracks might cause the effects. To test this interpretation they added another condition to Chandler. Fritz and H ala’s task, in w hich the objective was to make it easy for a friendly person to find the treasure. In the other condition, the child had to make it difficult for the other person, presented to the child as an opponent who would keep the treasure if he found it. Children could either wipe out the tracks, or reinforce their clarity by adding an extra line, it has been found that few three-year-olds did choose the right strategy, whereas all fo u r-\ear-olds applied the strategy o f reinforcing and wiping out tracks in the correct selective way. Hence, these findings show that three-year-olds can be lead to learn to appl> decepti\ e techniques, but they show no clear understanding o f their effect. Russel, M authner, Sharpe and Tidswell (1991) replicated the findings o f this kind o f com petitor-cooperator paradigm.

Peskin (1992) investigated the development o f the ability to conceal, as part o f the process o f lying. She described an event in which a 3-year-old asked his mother to go out o f the kitchen so he could take a cookie. Peskin explained that in this ease the child did not realise that it had been the m other’s informational state that w ould prevent the taking o f the cookie, and not her actual lack o f presence. Her experiments were new in the sense that children needed to hide information about their own prelerenees. and not hide objects. In the paradigm, a puppet ( ‘b a d ’) character, to the young ehild'.s disappointment, always chose the sticker that the subjects wanted. The only wa\ to avoid ihe bad puppet taking the child’s m uch wanted sticker was to conceal the inform ation about which sticker was desired, either by misinforming or by refusing to inform the puppet when asked. A

second puppet ( ‘g o o d ’) character also participated, but he alv\a\ s ensured that he did not choose the child’s desired sticker. Peskin reported a marked de\ elopm ent between the ages o f 3 and 5 years in children’s ability to conceal information. In a situation o f high affect involvement, 3-year-olds did not know to misinform or withhold information from the competitor, whereas 87% o f them knew to physically exclude the competitor. She concluded that the success o f the older children in concealing information indicated their newly acquired representational understanding that to influence an other's behaviour, one must influence that person’s mental state.

Thus far, research in understanding the concept o f lying has shown that the capacity, as a cognitive developmental task, is achieved during latency years, in 8- and 9-year-olds according to Piaget, and 10-and 11-year-olds according to Strichartz and Burton. TO M research findings, as mentioned previously, have found that it is just at 4 years old that children can be classified as having a TOM . 1 bus, understanding the concept o f lying, in terms o f taking into account other’s mind, as adults do, is achie\ ed later than acquiring a TOM . It is clear that the task o f verbally defining lying, as discussed in the previous sections, is m uch more complex for children to operate. Tapping the concept o f lying directly by asking children to define statements or situations displayed in the laboratory is much more complicated than tapping it through game-like procedures. The acquisition o f a mature concept o f lying requires the child to r e f e c t upon her thoughts and behaviour, to sort and distinguish different types o f lying. She needs to structure within her ow n mind the know ledge about actions, and to process her own experiences o f lying or being lied to, together with the accompanying moral elements, and to verbalise it in an abstract way (W hiten 1996). It is explicit mind reading in the sense o f aw areness o f others' desires and beliefs, as we explicitly recognise and differentiate states o f mind, states that have specific labels, like beliefs and desires.

H ow does one arrive at a concept o f a self who is both com parable to and differentiated from other selves who share the vital characteristic o f having minds? How does an infant becom e aware that he is like others in having mind, yet different from others in so far as he has his ow n feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and so on, and other people ha\ e theirs? Over the last decade philosophers and psychologists h a \ e raised the issue o f how these theory o f mind abilities develop. The debate is between theory-theor\ and simulation views (for

recent extensive review see Carruthers, 1996). Fodor (1987: 1992) in particular, has proposed that our knowledge o f folk-psychological theory is innate, developing in the child through a process o f maturation rather than learning, (lordon (1986) and Heal (1986) each proposed a simulationist alternative according to w hich w hat lies at the root o f our mature mind reading abilities is not any sort o f theory, hut rather an ability to project ourselves imaginatively into another p erson’s perspective, simulating their mental activity with our own.

The empirically elusive and conceptually complex problem o f developmental continuity (Kagan, 1982; Emde, 1988) has led developmentalists tow ards psychoanalytic constructs o f object relations theory (Bretherton, 1985; Sroufe, 1989; W'esten. 1990; Bretherton, 1992). Increasingly, work in developmental psychiatry and ps\ cholog) is Ibcusing on the pathways through which internal representations o f early experiences w ith the primary figures in childhood come to have an impact upon the formation o f relationships in later childhood and adulthood and culminate in the types o f relationships disorders and psychopathological conditions that appear across the life span ( f o i e and ihitnam, 1992; Westen and Cohen, 1993; Manley et ah, 1994).

Parental mirroring o f the infant’s mental states has long been regarded h\ psychoanalytic theorists as a central mechanism o f early psychic developm ent (Winnieott, 1965; Bion 1967; Mahler, 1975; Kohut, 1977). The child's growing recognition o f the existence o f mental states (feelings, beliefs, desires and intentions) arises through the shared understanding o f her own mental world and that o f the caregi\ er. The caregiver reflects upon the infant’s mental experience and represents it to her. Parental mirroring provides a kind o f feedback for the infant. W innicott (1965) claimed that the mother is looking at the baby and what she looks like is related to what she sees there.

Research on adult attachment has begun docum enting the relationship between the m other’s attachm ent status (the security o f her attachment to her mother) and the attachm ent status o f her child (Haft and Slade, 1989; Main and Hesse. 1990; .Ainsworth and Eichenberg, 1991; Bus, 1992; Bus, 1996; van-l.Is/.cndoorn and Bakermans- Kranenburg, 1996). The present phase in the study o f attachm ent is identified with an increasingly widespread interest in representational processes (Bretherton and Waters, 1985). The m ove to the level o f mental representation in attachm ent theory and research

implies an em phasis on the cognitive organisation and rcconsiruciion o f childhood attachment experiences in line with the cognitive sciences. Main (19dl ) proposed that differences in attachment organisations during childhood are strongly linked to the quality o f meta-cognition in the parent, and that incoherent adult narratives indicating poorly structured multiple models o f attachment relationships are a key cause o f the child’s insecure pattern o f attachment. M ain (1991) further argued that the absence o f meta- cognitive capacity, the inability to “understand the merely representational nature o f their own (and others’) thinking” ( p .128), makes infants and toddlers \iilnerable to the inconsistency o f the caregiver’s behaviour. They are unable to step be\ ond the immediate reality o f experience and grasp the distinction between appearance and reality, between immediate experience and the mental state that might underlie it. 1 hus it is not just maternal sensitivity and care giving that might be reliable predictors o f the quality o f the parent-child relationship. N o less important is the m other's m e ta-cogniii\e capacity, her understanding o f mental states and her readiness to contemplate these in a coherent