The self and action in theory of mind research

doi:10.1016/S1053-8100(03)00082-5

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 12, Issue 4, December 2003, Pages 777-782

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8100(03)00082-5 Get rights and content

Abstract

Research on children’s developing theories of mind has contributed to our understanding of the developmental relation of self and action (1) by exploring the relation of the development of self knowledge to the development of knowledge of others’ minds and (2) by investigating the relation between theory of mind development and the development of action control. We argue that evidence on theory of mind reasoning in children with deficient action control (ADHD-diagnosed children) is especially relevant to the second issue and we present some first evidence supporting the bi-directional hypothesis, that is, the view that theory of mind leads to improved action control which in turn supports the ability to represent mental states on-line.

Introduction

Children’s developing ability to attribute mental states to themselves and others has been the focus of a large body of research in the past 20 years (see Flavell, 1999; Lee & Homer, 1999; Wellman, 2002 for reviews). Around the age of four years, children begin to use an intuitive belief-desire psychology for action prediction and explanation. While a mentalistic understanding of agents develops around the age of 18 months (Gergely & Csibra, 2003), and explicit attribution of desires begins around the age of two years, belief attribution poses a conceptual problem for children below the age of about four years. Belief understanding requires a representational understanding of the mind (Perner, 1991). Beliefs can differ from reality and thus misrepresent reality. Therefore, the case of false belief has become a diagnostic test for children’s conception of the mind as representational (Wimmer & Perner, 1983). Around the age of four years, children begin to differentiate beliefs from reality, and understand that beliefs (not states of the world) guide action. The appearance-reality differentiation, the distinction between pretense and belief, advanced (Level 2) visual perspective taking abilities, as well as an understanding of the seeing-knowing relation develop in the same age range as belief understanding. These developmental changes occur in close conjunction, supporting the view that a coherent body of conceptual knowledge guides four-year-old children’s psychological reasoning.

Section snippets

The self

Within the theory of mind framework, development of the self has been studied under the aspect of the relation between knowledge about one’s own mind and knowledge about others’ minds. Intuitively, it appears that we have immediate access to our own mental states whereas we gain access to others’ minds through inferential processes. Consistent with this notion, simulation theory (Harris, 1992) assumes a special way of accessing one’s own mental states. This view is inconsistent, however, with a

The self and action control

At about the same age as children gain insight into their own and others‘ representational mental states, they also show marked improvement on a variety of measures of action control (executive function tasks). A developmental relation between children’s mastery of theory of mind tasks and their improvement on executive function tasks has been demonstrated in normal development (Carlson, Moses, & Hix, 1998; Perner, Lang, & Kloo, 2002; Russell, Mauthner, Sharpe, & Tidswell, 1991; see Perner &

References (36)

G. Gergely et al.
Teleological reasoning in infancy: The naı̈ve theory of rational action
Trends in Cognitive Science
(2003)
H. Wimmer et al.
Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception
Cognition
(1983)
R.A. Barkley
Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD
Psychological Bulletin
(1997)
S. Baron-Cohen
Theory of mind and autism: A fifteen year review
J.K. Buitelaar et al.
Theory of mind and emotion-recognition functioning in autistic spectrum disorders and in psychiatric control and normal children
Development and Psychopathology
(1999)
S.M. Carlson et al.
The role of inhibitory processes in young children’s difficulties with deception and false belief
Developmental Psychology
(1998)
T. Charman et al.
Theory of mind, executive function and social competence in boys with ADHD
Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties
(2001)
J.H. Flavell
Cognitive development: Children’s knowledge about the mind
Annual Review of Psychology
(1999)
U. Frith et al.
Theory of mind and self consciousness. What is it like to be autistic?
Mind and Language
(1999)
A. Gopnik
How we know our minds: The illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
(1993)

A. Gopnik et al.

Children’s understanding of representational change and its relation to the understanding of false belief and the appearance-reality distinction

Child Development

(1988)

A. Gopnik et al.

Knowing how you know: Young children’s ability to identify and remember the sources of their beliefs

Child Development

(1988)

A. Gopnik et al.

Young children’s understanding of changes in their mental states

Child Development

(1991)

F. Happé

An advanced test of theory of mind: Understanding of story characters’ thoughts and feelings by able autistic, mentally handicapped, and normal children and adults

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

(1994)

F. Happé et al.

Theory of mind and social impairment in children with conduct disorder

British Journal of Developmental Psychology

(1996)

P.L. Harris

From simulation to folk psychology: The case for development

Mind and Language

(1992)

C. Hughes et al.

Trick or treat? Uneven understanding of mind and emotion and executive dysfunction in hard-to-manage preschoolers

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

(1998)

C. Hughes et al.

Autistic children’s difficulty with mental disengagement from an object: Its implication for theories of autism

Developmental Psychology

(1993)

Cited by (29)

The association between symptom severity and theory of mind impairment in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
2021, Psychiatry Research
Citation Excerpt :
Deficits in interpersonal functioning in children with ADHD have been attributed, at least in part, to impairment in theory of mind (ToM) – the ability to attribute mental states, beliefs, and intentions to self and others (Abu-Akel and Shamay-Tsoory, 2011; Uekermann et al., 2010). For example, some studies have shown that children with ADHD have deficits in the ability to recognize facial expressions (Buhler et al., 2011; Da Fonseca et al., 2009), whereas other studies have found impairments in first- and second-order ToM tests (Bora and Pantelis, 2016; Buitelaar et al., 1999; Sodian et al., 2003). Some evidence has shown that empathy (as a trait), defined as the ability to understand and share another person's experiences and emotions, is impaired in children with ADHD.
The aim was to investigate the correlation between ADHD symptom severity and impairments in "theory of mind" (ToM) and empathy, and the improvement in these functions following the administration of methylphenidate (MPH). Fifty children aged 6–12 years with ADHD participated in the study. Symptom severity was assessed using the Swanson, Nolan and Pelham Questionnaire-IV (SNAP-IV). ToM performance was assessed using the "ToM test" and the “Faux-Pas Recognition Test”. A significant negative correlation was found between the SNAP-IV Conners index, the oppositional and deportment subscales, and ToM test scores. MPH administration improved ToM scores in a magnitude that was negatively correlated with baseline performance. Additionally, Children with more severe behavioral problems showed greater improvement in ToM following administration of MPH. We conclude that severity of ADHD symptoms, most notably behavioral symptoms, is correlated with deficits in ToM. Administration of MPH improves ToM performance, with the greatest improvement occurring in children with more severe behavioral symptoms.
Controlling attention to gaze and arrows in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
2017, Psychiatry Research
Citation Excerpt :
Our results are also consistent with recent findings demonstrating that ADHD showed evidence of reflexive orienting only to locations previously cued by non-social stimuli (arrow and peripheral cues) but failed to show such orienting effect in response to social eye gaze cues (Marotta et al., 2014). Taken together, these findings suggest a specific social impairment in the ability to attend another person’s eye-gaze direction, which is in keeping with evidence of ADHD difficulties in the ability to decode more complex social cues such as the emotions and mental states of others (Pelc et al., 2006; Sinzig et al., 2008; Sodian et al., 2003). It might be argued that the poor sensitivity to the eye-gaze of others shown by people with ADHD is linked to their dysfunctional activity in right cerebral hemisphere (Acosta and Leon-Sarmiento, 2003; Lee et al., 2005; Overmeyer et al., 2001; Sandson et al., 2000) the brain area mainly involved in orienting to gaze cues (Greene and Zaidel, 2011; Kingstone et al., 2000; Marotta et al., 2012a).
The aim of this research was to assess implicit processing of social and non-social distracting cues in children with ADHD. Young people with ADHD and matched controls were asked to classify target words (LEFT/RIGHT) which were accompanied by a distracter eye-gaze or arrow. Typically developing participants showed evidence of interference effects from both eye-gaze and arrow distracters. In contrast, the ADHD group showed evidence of interference effects from arrow but failed to show interference from eye-gaze. This absence of interference effects from eye-gaze observed in the participants with ADHD may reflect an attentional impairment in attending to socially relevant information.
Explicit vs. applied theory of mind competence: A comparison of typically developing males, males with ASD, and males with ADHD
2016, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders
Citation Excerpt :
Although there is agreement that children with ASD and children with ADHD have many similar comorbid problems, consensus is lacking as to whether, or to what extent, certain ‘Theory of Mind’ deficits typical of ASD are common in ADHD. Theory of Mind (ToM) has been defined as “a body of conceptual knowledge that underlies access to both one’s own and others’ mental states” (Sodian, Hulsken, & Thoermer, 2003, p. 778). Originally used in a narrow sense (i.e., merely to describe performance on the false belief task), ToM has come to be construed as a broad, complex, and multifaceted construct.
Using laboratory-type Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks (our measure of ‘explicit’ ToM competence) and a more ecologically-valid measure of ToM (our measure of ‘applied’ ToM competence), we found that for composite scores, typically developing (TD) males performed near ceiling levels on both indices and age-matched males with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) performed near floor levels on both indices. The scores for age-matched males with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) showed a different pattern such that the ADHD group had high scores on the explicit measure and low scores on the applied measure. Subscale scores (early, basic, advanced ToM) for the two indices also revealed that (1) despite variable complexity, explicit ToM almost always distinguished the ASD group from the other two groups but never distinguished the ADHD and TD groups and (2) level of complexity was critical for distinguishing groups with regard to applied ToM. We suggest that although children with ADHD can calculate the content of traditional laboratory ToM tasks, this explicit ToM competence fails to be applied and expressed in real world demonstrations of ToM (especially when advanced ToM skills are assessed). By contrast, the ToM difficulties of children with ASD seem to be attributable to a deeper metarepresentational deficit. Our results have implications for practice and extend current models of social cognition in developmental disabilities by isolating variable aspects of competence that predict specific and testable models for future research.
Neuroanatomical and neurochemical bases of theory of mind
2011, Neuropsychologia
This paper presents a novel neurobiological model of theory of mind (ToM) that incorporates both neuroanatomical and neurochemical levels of specificity. Within this model, cortical and subcortical regions are functionally organized into networks that subserve the ability to represent cognitive and affective mental states to both self and other. The model maintains that (1) cognitive and affective aspects of ToM are subserved by dissociable, yet interacting, prefrontal networks. The cognitive ToM network primarily engages the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the dorsal striatum; and the affective ToM network primarily engages the ventromedial and orbitofrontal cortices, the ventral anterior cingulate cortex, the amygdala and the ventral striatum; (2) self and other mental-state representation is processed by distinct brain regions within the mentalizing network, and that the ability to distinguish between self and other mental states is modulated by a functionally interactive dorsal and ventral attention/selection systems at the temporoparietal junction and the anterior cingulate cortex; and (3) ToM functioning is dependent on the integrity of the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems which are primarily engaged in the maintenance and application processes of represented mental states. In addition to discussing the mechanisms involved in mentalizing in terms of its component processes, we discuss the model's implications to pathologies that variably impact one's ability to represent, attribute and apply mental states.
Social cognition in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
2010, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with a range of cognitive deficits and social cognition impairments, which might be interpreted in the context of fronto-striatal dysfunction. So far only few studies have addressed the issue of social cognition deficits in ADHD.
Medline and Psyclit searches were performed for a 30-year period (1979–2009) using the words ‘ADHD’ and ‘social cognition’, ‘theory of mind’, ‘prosody’, ‘face perception’, ‘humour’ or ‘social information processing’. Inclusion criteria consisted of a diagnosis according to DSM as well as the inclusion of a control group or a follow-up assessment following the treatment with methylphenidate.
ADHD is clearly associated with social cognition impairments involving emotional face and prosody perception. Although the database is sparse so far, there is some evidence for theory of mind deficits and reduced empathy in ADHD.
In summary, the social cognition impairments are consistent with fronto-striatal dysfunction in ADHD, but other functional networks of brain areas also appear to be implicated.
The point of view of children with ADHD on the consequences of their disorder and their schooling via a children's book
2023, ANAE - Approche Neuropsychologique des Apprentissages chez l'Enfant

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text

The self and action in theory of mind research

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

The self

The self and action control

Trends in Cognitive Science

Cognition

Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD

Psychological Bulletin

Theory of mind and autism: A fifteen year review

Theory of mind and emotion-recognition functioning in autistic spectrum disorders and in psychiatric control and normal children

Development and Psychopathology

The role of inhibitory processes in young children’s difficulties with deception and false belief

Developmental Psychology

Theory of mind, executive function and social competence in boys with ADHD

Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties

Cognitive development: Children’s knowledge about the mind

Annual Review of Psychology

Theory of mind and self consciousness. What is it like to be autistic?

Mind and Language

How we know our minds: The illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Children’s understanding of representational change and its relation to the understanding of false belief and the appearance-reality distinction

Child Development

Knowing how you know: Young children’s ability to identify and remember the sources of their beliefs

Child Development

Young children’s understanding of changes in their mental states

Child Development

An advanced test of theory of mind: Understanding of story characters’ thoughts and feelings by able autistic, mentally handicapped, and normal children and adults

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Theory of mind and social impairment in children with conduct disorder

British Journal of Developmental Psychology

From simulation to folk psychology: The case for development

Mind and Language

Trick or treat? Uneven understanding of mind and emotion and executive dysfunction in hard-to-manage preschoolers

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

Autistic children’s difficulty with mental disengagement from an object: Its implication for theories of autism

Developmental Psychology