Why the Child's Theory of Mind Really Is a Theory

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73444/1/j.1468-0017.1992.tb00202.x.pd

Bayes and Blickets: Effects of Knowledge on Causal Induction in Children and Adults

People are adept at inferring novel causal relations, even from only a few observations. Prior knowledge about the probability of encountering causal relations of various types and the nature of the mechanisms relating causes and effects plays a crucial role in these inferences. We test a formal account of how this knowledge can be used and acquired, based on analyzing causal induction as Bayesian inference. Five studies explored the predictions of this account with adults and 4-year-olds, using tasks in which participants learned about the causal properties of a set of objects. The studies varied the two factors that our Bayesian approach predicted should be relevant to causal induction: the prior probability with which causal relations exist, and the assumption of a deterministic or a probabilistic relation between cause and effect. Adults’ judgments (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) were in close correspondence with the quantitative predictions of the model, and children’s judgments (Experiments 3 and 5) agreed qualitatively with this account.Mitsubishi Electronic Research LaboratoriesUnited States. Air Force Office of Sponsored ResearchMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Paul E. Newton ChairJames S. McDonnell Foundatio

I know what you need to know: Children’s developing theory of mind andpedagogical evidence selection

Natural pedagogy emerges early in development (Knudsen &Liszkowski, 2012), but good teaching requires presenting ev-idence specific to learners’ knowledge (Shafto, Goodman, &Griffiths, 2014). How might the development of Theory ofMind (ToM) relate to the ability to select pedagogical evi-dence? We present a training study in which we investigatedthe link between preschool-aged children’s false-belief under-standing and their ability to select evidence for teaching. Ourresults suggest that children with more advanced ToM abili-ties were better evidence selectors, even when controlling foreffects of age and numerical conservation abilities. We alsofound that children who improved more in false-belief under-standing from pre- to post-test performed better on the peda-gogical tasks over the course of the training. Finally, we reporttentative evidence for a link between the pedagogical train-ing and improvements in ToM. Our findings suggest importantconnections between ToM and evidential reasoning in naturalpedagogy in early childhood

Learning to reason about desires: An infant training study

A key aspect of theory of mind is the ability to reason about other people's desires. As adults, we know that desires and preferences are subjective and specific to the individual. However, research in cognitive development suggests that a significant conceptual shift occurs in desire-based reasoning between 14 and 18 months of age, allowing 18- but not 14- month-olds to understand that different people can have different preferences (Lucas et al., 2014; Ma & Xu 2011; Repacholi & Gopnik, 1997). The present research investigates the kind of evidence that is relevant for inducing this shift and whether younger infants can be trained to learn about the diversity of preferences. In Experiment 1, infants younger than 18 months of age were shown demonstrations in which two experimenters either liked the same objects as each other (in one training condition) or different objects (in another training condition). Following training, all infants were asked to share one of two foods with one of the experimenters – they could either share a food that the experimenter showed disgust towards (and the infants themselves liked) or a food that the experimenter showed happiness towards (and the infants themselves did not like). We found that infants who observed two different experimenters liking different objects during training later provided the experimenter with the food she liked, even if it was something they disliked themselves. However, when infants observed two experimenters liking the same objects, they later incorrectly shared the food that they themselves liked with the experimenter. Experiment 2 controlled for an alternative interpretation of these findings. Our results suggest that training allows infants to overturn an initial theory in the domain of Theory of Mind for a more advanced one

Just do it? Investigating the gap between prediction and action in toddlers' causal inferences

Adults’ causal representations integrate information about predictive relations and the possibility of effective intervention; if one event reliably predicts another, adults can represent the possibility that acting to bring about the first event might generate the second. Here we show that although toddlers (mean age: 24 months) readily learn predictive relationships between physically connected events, they do not spontaneously initiate one event to try to generate the second (although older children, mean age: 47 months, do; Experiments 1 and 2). Toddlers succeed only when the events are initiated by a dispositional agent (Experiment 3), when the events involve direct contact between objects (Experiment 4), or when the events are described using causal language (Experiment 5). This suggests that causal language may help children extend their initial causal representations beyond agent-initiated and direct contact events.James S. McDonnell Foundation (Causal Learning Collaborative)American Psychological FoundationTempleton Foundatio

Sensitive perception of a person’s direction of walking by 4-year-old children.

Watch any crowded intersection, and you will see how adept people are at reading the subtle movements of one another. While adults can readily discriminate small differences in the direction of a moving person, it is unclear if this sensitivity is in place early in development. Here, we present evidence that 4-year-old children are sensitive to small differences in a person's direction of walking (ϳ7°) far beyond what has been previously shown. This sensitivity only occurred for perception of an upright walker, consistent with the recruitment of high-level visual areas. Even at 4 years of age, children's sensitivity approached that of adults'. This suggests that the sophisticated mechanisms adults use to perceive a person's direction of movement are in place and developing early in childhood. Although the neural mechanisms for perceiving biological motion develop slowly, they are refined enough by age 4 to support subtle perceptual judgments of heading. These judgments may be useful for predicting a person's future location or even their intentions and goals

Win-Stay, Lose-Sample: A simple sequential algorithm for approximating Bayesian inference

a b s t r a c t People can behave in a way that is consistent with Bayesian models of cognition, despite the fact that performing exact Bayesian inference is computationally challenging. What algorithms could people be using to make this possible? We show that a simple sequential algorithm ''Win-Stay, Lose-Sample'', inspired by the Win-Stay, Lose-Shift (WSLS) principle, can be used to approximate Bayesian inference. We investigate the behavior of adults and preschoolers on two causal learning tasks to test whether people might use a similar algorithm. These studies use a ''mini-microgenetic method'', investigating how people sequentially update their beliefs as they encounter new evidence. Experiment 1 investigates a deterministic causal learning scenario and Experiments 2 and 3 examine how people make inferences in a stochastic scenario. The behavior of adults and preschoolers in these experiments is consistent with our Bayesian version of the WSLS principle. This algorithm provides both a practical method for performing Bayesian inference and a new way to understand people's judgments