Introduction
Theory of mind refers to the ability presumption that people or other beings have a mind.This stems from the fact that one can only intuit existence of his/her own mind via introspection and there is no direct link to another persons mind.Theory of mind will always allow a person to have thoughts,wishes,intentions and desires to others,prediction or explanation of other people actions and even elaborate on the intentions of those actions.In most cases,Theory of mind seems to be like innate ability in humans,although one needs social and other much more experience over some period of years to be fruitful.
Empathy is a virtue that really contributes a lot to this concept.It helps one experientially recognize and be familiar or understand the other people state of mind, that is desires, beliefs and specifically their emotions. This is often referred to as the put oneself into another’s shoes. According to the recent neuron ethological researches on animal behavior show that rodents also exhibit empathic abilities. Folk psychology acts as fundamental resource for us to introduce meanings in the causes world. A new perspective on this pillar, folk psychology, has surfaced in psychology and philosophy of mind. As per this new stunt, ones ability to interprate is viewed as a competence,a particular level of endowment of the beings mind liberated to understand other people and ourselves in the sense of mental states.
The empathic perspective was replaced by the above most recent one, the theory of mind which aids in interpreting minds of others in the form of theory concepts of intentional states. In the field of developmental psychology, we are able to see that children exhibit a precocious ability for understanding intentions as well as other important mind aspects. However, during the early 80’s , H.Wimmer and his associate J.Perner, who were psychologists of that time, came up with a more focused perspective, which stated that children below the age of 5 years revealed that there was no development of full-legged theory of mind. This kind of perspective and mind state in children that makes them come up with false beliefs upon someone else is referred to as false belief task.
As recent studies reveal, children above 6 years perceive a sophisticated theory of mind like that of adults, that enables them to understand actions of social agents as per their mental states and even being able to differentiate between self mental state and that of others. Despite this, there is argument that even adults do use theory of mind in a way that is not reliable and not designed for, that is to interpret other people actions. This can be seen from a simple experiment where a group leader instructed his fellow members to move around their study room with their laptops still in their rag sacks. Before the leader had issued the instructions, the members had already zipped up their rag sacks, such that they were only aware of the model of laptops they had, unlike the group leader. In a couple of times the leader’s description that he used to refer to those mutually-visible laptops closely matched the models of those hidden laptops. Although the members clearly knew that their leader did not know models of their hidden laptops, they often relied on this as a referent of the leader’s description. These experiment outcomes reveal a stark dissociation emerging between the personal ability to reflectively differentiate self beliefs from those of others, and the routine use of this ability for the interpretation of other humans’ actions. Therefore, I propose that the above mentioned dissociation shows that some of the important elements in adult theory of mind were not incorporated fully into the system of human comprehension medium.
The existing child development literature is categorized into a class of how children develop self ability to handle representations solely from reality, and another class of differentiating between their own beliefs from those of others. When these children begin schooling, they are able to reveal their adult-like sophisticated ability in two categories. They acknowledge that other beings can bear false beliefs and also, they are able to appreciate the fact that other humans can ignore something that is already known to them. While in support of the idea that children perceive such an ability as early as at the age of 6 years, we can say that this self potential is still “in the box” to the extent of even college students and past that level. This ideology of the ability being in the box is stems from the fact that, this ability is there but is only put into use when necessary.
In general, we are able to conclude from the above premises that both children of the age 6 years and above, and adults perceive this sophisticated ability to distinguish one’s own beliefs from those of others, acknowledge false beliefs and even can forecast their own future actions from the tendency revealed by the past actions. One is in a position to explain the actions, beliefs, desires and intentions of others through the use of theory of mind, in that he/she puts himself in the shoes of the other person.
Keysar task involves a process that is more valid ecologically, unlike the theory of mind that was employed in most of the neuroimaging experiments. This new approach of keysar task is based on a paradigm that brings out large number of errors in adults and even continues to develop later in the adolescence stage. This paradigm has been used in most of the recent experiments and is thought to be the best in testing the use of theory of memory concepts in more realistic communication case. Under this kind of pillar, the keysar task, taking the above example of the leader and his fellow class members, here the participants who are the members, have to take into account their group leader’s perspective when moving their laptops around the room. In addition, some of the laptops are hidden such that the leader cannot be able to see them. The resultant situation is that participants often forget to put into consideration the leader’s perspective and instead apply an egocentric heuristic. Imposing the keysar task paradigm, we can design an advanced computerized form of the above task. using a second method, we then literally introduce a matching control condition where the leader is absent and , instead, members have to adhere to a condition. (“do not move any black rag sacks”). On the basis of the computerized form of the task, we were able to see that adults make a lot of errors in the leader condition. In the second method, we saw that those at the adolescence stage are much worse at applying theory of mind-derived information than adults, revealing a stronger egocentric bias. This brings out the difference between the leader’s task and other theory of mind tasks, in that there is a need for participants to bear a well functioning theory of mind, as well as using it with several cognitive processes so as to overcome the self egocentric bias. The continued interaction of the theory of mind and those executive functions also develops at the late adolescence stage, making the adults still prone to errors. The intention of this keysar task paradigm was to investigate whether the ideology of taking into account the leader perspective would trigger the brain parts involved in the social cognition whenever the task requires the members to consider other people’s knowledge and intentions under any online communication with the individual in question.
The keysar task paradigm was also modified to yield even better results. This was done through dividing the task into two levels, where the first one, that is half of the trials, involved the presence of the leader and the members had to take into account their leader’s perspective when interpreting the instructions. The rest of the trials involved members following a set of simple rules that had to be considered when interpreting the same instructions as in the first half trials, with an exception of the leader being absent. Comparing the two levels of interpreting the instructions lead to activation of the brain parts that are involved in the mentalising by the fact that they have to put into consideration the leader perspective and also follow the set rules in moving the right object. In cases where a person made error, this meant that he/she had selected the wrong object. Therefore, he/she was supposed to adopt another individual’s perspective or utilize the set rules in order to choose the right object.
Conclusion
On the side of the keysar task paradigm, there is generality in that individuals are prone to error making when making interpretation of one’s own beliefs, actions, desires and even their intentions. People are in a state where their brains have been modulated to activate the parts that are involved in social cognitive activities mentalising, thus being in state of interpreting instructions correctly and if wrongly done, then the ideology of taking into account of others perspective comes in, enabling the person to rectify the wrong interpretation. This paradigm helps in making sure that one internalizes the processing of the visual perspective of information in any communication context. This study helps in reinforcing the need of differentiating between cognitive processes (those are the visual perspective aspects) and their use in an online complex realistic case so as to understand better the aspects of social cognition.
On the side of theory of mind, we have been able to come to a clear conclusion revealing that both adults and children of 6 years and above of age, are in a position to distinguish between their own beliefs, desires, and intentions from those of others. This is ensured by the underlying fact that they have a full-fledged sophisticated ability, the theory of mind, already developed in them. In the above context of keysar task paradigm, theory of mind is necessary in that one has to distinguish between his/her own belief, actions and intentions from those of the other person in order to avoid making false beliefs error. Thus, one is able to recognize when it is necessary to adopt other people’s perspective when in a situation of beliefs of others. this will ensure that the errors of bias are minimal since one is acting and thinking in the perspective of the other person, that is putting him/herself in the shoes of the other. Through the application of the theory of mind in the keysar task paradigm, one is able to acknowledge that human beings are prone to errors when it comes to interpretation of instructions. This is because the tend to implement the given rules by considering their egocentric characters and thus bringing about biasness in their results. In relation with corrective measures, keysar task has been modified like mentioned above so as keep individuals in a mind-set state, where their brain parts that mentalise those particular activities are always modulated, ready to determine when there is, or no need to consider other individuals perspective.
Conclusion.
A combination of the two, that is the keysar task paradigm and the theory of mind is always necessary. This is because there is the need to recognize cases of considering others perspective, establishing false beliefs, distinguishing visual representation as they appear in mind from their realistic application on the physical world. The continued implementation of keysar task is a good system of triggering the one’s brain to always emulate any information in two ways, the self-based and also other person’s basis. This is shall ensure minimal or no errors in procedure implementation.
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