Theory of Mind Development

Running Head: THEORY OF MIND DEVELOPMENT

The Developmental Neuroscience of Theory of Mind Andy Forceno 12/12/08 Psychology 3306 Temple University

Introduction

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Theory of mind (ToM) is a collection of cognitive abilities that allow us to understand people as autonomous, goal-directed agents with minds that represent beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions, and that these mental representations may conflict with reality. The phrase theory of mind emphasizes that our everyday or folk psychology involves seeing oneself and others in terms of mental states that are expressed through action (Stuss & Alexander, 2001). It enables us to accurately anticipate other peoples behavior, and in so doing, allows us to cooperate, empathize with, or deceive others (Gallagher & Frith, 2003). Moreover, the intuitive understanding of other minds that ToM enables is essential for our appreciation of pretense and the mental lives of characters in literature and other arts (Siegal & Varley, 2002). To have a ToM means understanding that a persons actions are determined by their beliefs, and that oneself and others may have false beliefs that do not correspond to reality. It is through our learned ToM abilities that we understand that it is a persons false belief, and not reality, that determines their behavior (Gallagher & Frith, 2003). It has been proposed that ToM evolved from pre-existing cognitive processes that may still be involved in ToM abilities. Some of these processes include the ability to distinguish between animate and inanimate entities, the ability to share attention by following eye gaze, and the ability to represent goal-directed actions and to distinguish between these self-derived actions and the actions of others (Gallagher & Frith, 2003). ToM research has grown to become one of the largest areas within child cognitive development (Flavell, 2004). Findings thus far indicate that neonates are innately predisposed to interacting with people and understanding them as different from non-human objects. Furthermore, children acquire a number of cognitive skills

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early on that eventually culminate in the ability to represent the mental states of others. Between the ages of 4 and 5, children from all cultures tested thus far acquire the ability to represent mental states such as false beliefs. While the normal acquisition of a ToM is an important developmental milestone, the developmental disorder Autism is characterized by severe social-cognitive impairment, including the inability to understand other minds. In this paper I briefly look at the history of ToM research and its findings, from neonatal development to the effects of senescence on ToM abilities. Furthermore, I briefly review theoretical accounts of ToM development as well as extensive neuroimaging data on the neural correlates of ToM abilities.

A brief history of theory of mind research The history of ToM research, like so many other areas of research into cognitive development, begins with Piaget. Piaget claimed that children begin development as cognitively egocentric, meaning that they initially have no knowledge of conceptual, perceptual, and emotional perspectives. As a result, they cannot be aware that they have their own point-of-view and that it differs from those of others. Piaget and his colleagues assessed cognitive egocentricity in children with the three mountains task. In this task a child sits in front of a table with three model mountains of various heights arranged on it. The child sits directly in front of one of the models while a doll is placed directly in front of one of the other models. The child is then asked to either draw a picture of the dolls visual perspective of the mountain or select out of a set of pictures one which corresponds to the Dolls visual perspective. Piaget found that when asked, 4- and 5-year-old children chose the picture that corresponded to their own perspective rather than

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the dolls perspective. Surprisingly, Piaget found that it was not until 9 years of age that a child fully comprehends the dolls perspective (Borke, 1975). Researchers in the 1970s criticized Piagets findings on the grounds that the task was too difficult for children below 9. With that in mind, researchers retested children with more ageappropriate tasks and found that children as young as 3 understand that a doll has a different perspective than they do (Borke, 1975). The foundations for contemporary ToM research were laid in 1978, in an article about the cognitive capacities of non-human primates by Premack and Woodruff (Siegal & Varley, 2002). In it, the authors argued that one could demonstrate that chimpanzees have a ToM if they are taught to deceive a competitor (Wimmer & Perner, 1983). Premack and Woodruff were later successful in teaching deceptive pointing in 2 of 4 chimpanzees after 5 months of training. It was noted that the difficulty in teaching deception to chimpanzees is comparable to teaching them language (Wimmer & Perner, 1983). Three philosophers, all independently commenting on the original 1978 article, proposed a test to find out whether an animal had a concept of a belief. This test, now known as the false-belief task, has become a standard measure for ToM in neuroimaging and behavioral studies. In the task, children are presented with a scenario such as: Maxi puts his chocolate in the cupboard and leaves the room to play. While he is away (and cannot see) his mother moves the chocolate from the cupboard to the drawer. Maxi returns. Where will he look for his chocolate, in the drawer or the cupboard? (Wimmer & Perner, 1983, p. 106) The false belief task is considered a better test for the concept of belief than a true-belief task because a child can pass a true belief task by egocentrically assuming that other people know what they know (Flavell, 2000). Wimmer and

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Perner (1983), the first researchers to carry out false belief experiments in children, found that none of the 3- to 4-year-olds, a little more than half (57%) of 4- to 5-yearolds, and almost all (86%) of the 6- to 9-year-olds could correctly locate where a character in a series of sketches will look for an object that was moved without her knowledge. Numerous studies have replicated these original findings, all of which suggest that most 3- to 4-year-old children do not have a concept of a false-belief, and thus lack the ability to attribute a particular kind of mental state, a false-belief, to another person (Flavell, 1999). Despite the widespread acceptance of the false-belief task as a standard test of ToM, Bloom and German (2000) argued for why it should be abandoned as such. They cited as evidence a host of research articles about ToM abilities in 2-year-olds. Some of this research I have summarized in the following section, such as the fact that 2-year-olds make a distinction between persons and objects, and that they see people as agents that are self-propelled and goal-directed. Further evidence comes from studies showing that 2-year-olds imitate pretend play as well as the complete and incomplete actions of others. Thus, according to Bloom and German, it is not fair to say 2-year-olds do not possess a ToM because they only fail on tests of a single aspect of ToM. Furthermore, it is possible that 2-year-olds can pass a falsebelief test that presented them with less task demands. When 3-year-olds were given a more age-appropriate false-belief task many of them passed. Despite their argument against the false belief task as a standard measure of ToM, the authors conclude that the task is still useful as long as it is considered within its proper context (Bloom & German, 2000). Though research into the acquisition of false-belief attribution is the most often cited in all of ToM research, beginning in the 1980s, work on childrens

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knowledge about perception and the distinction between appearance and reality became, part of the theory-of-mind movement (Flavell, 2004, p. 276). This growing body of research began to document a marked improvement in the performance of 3- to 5-year-old children on various false-belief, appearance-reality, and knowledge of level 2 visual perspective-taking tasks (Flavell, 2004). In the 1990s, researchers began studying the neural substrates of ToM in adults through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET). Although most ToM research concerns its development during infancy and childhood, beginning in 1998 with a pioneering study by Happe, Winner, & Brownell (1998), researchers began studying the effects of senescence on ToM. In 2004, Flavell noted that a database search resulted in a listing of 399 scientific publications that contained the phrase theory of mind. A recent search on PubMed by the present author revealed some 941 publications which contained the same phrase. Though surely many of those papers are not directly related to ToM research, the increased use of the phrase theory of mind is a testament to the growing influence of such research outside of developmental neuroscientists and psychologists. Below I will summarize the findings of this flourishing field of research, beginning first with a developmental timeline for various cognitive abilities that give rise to a ToM, and then a review of recent imaging studies into the neural basis of ToM.

Development of theory of mind Although the maturation of ToM takes many years, infants are born with or acquire various abilities and traits that form the basis of their understanding of other minds. Neonates are equipped with the capacities to attend to others and

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make others attend to them, and thus they are innately predisposed to learning as much about people as possible, paving the way for later acquisition of a ToM. Neonates are especially attracted to human faces, voices, and movements and they quickly learn to respond differently to people than to objects. For instance, one study found that 5- to 8-week-old infants would imitate tongue and mouth movements produced by an adult but not by an object (Flavell, 2004). Secondly, infants also tend to act more surprised when an inanimate object appears to move on its own than when a person moves on their own (Flavell, 2000). Young infants are even capable of distinguishing their mothers voice from another womans based on prenantal exposure to the mothers voice (Flavell, 1999). Additionally, they also seem to interpret people as agents that are autonomous, goal-directed, and capable of being influenced at a distance (Flavell, 2004). During the first year or so, infants learn how people differ from objects. During the latter half of the first year and throughout the second year, infants learn how people relate psychologically to objects. Between 12 and 24 months infants learn that peoples behavior possesses intentionality, or aboutness. A persons behavior is about an object in the sense that he or she attends to it and makes it the object of their thoughts, desires, and intentions (Flavell, 2004). Infants perform a number of actions that indicate their knowledge of intentionality. They point towards or vocalize about objects and check to see whether another person attends to it. Carpenter, Nagell, and Tomosello (1998) have documented a five-step developmental sequence in which infants go from sharing/checking (at 9-10 months) to following (at 11 months) to directing others attention and then behavior (at 12 months).

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By 18 months, infants can infer what action another person is trying to perform even if that person is unsuccessful in executing the action. By this same age infants also understand that they should give an experimenter food that she shows pleasure towards rather than one the experimenter acts with disgust towards, even if the infant prefers the latter food (Flavell, 1999). Both of these findings suggest that 18-month-olds have some understanding that peoples actions are intentional and goal-directed and that they have some capacity to reason about other people desires (Flavell, 2004). Around this same time, between 18 and 24 months, children begin using words that refer to specific mental states such as see and want, suggesting that even this early in development children have the beginnings of a ToM. By the end of infancy children begin to do other things that suggest a beginning understanding of other minds, such as trying to comfort people in distress or, less positively, teasing and annoying siblings in an attempt to anger them (Flavell, 1999). During the preschool years (ages 3 to 5) there is rapid development of perceptual, attentional and emotional processes that subserve ToM. Children in their early preschool years already know that a person can only see an object if their eyes are aimed in the direction of the object and there are no visual obstructions. With this knowledge they are able to perform non-egocentric visual perspectivetaking, such as inferring that you may see something that they cannot. This ability, called level 1 knowledge of visual perspective, is what Piaget tested for and found lacking in children as old as 9, as mentioned previously. Between ages 4 and 5 children learn level 2 knowledge of visual perspective, that a single object can present different visual perspectives to two people if viewed from different positions (Flavell, 2004).

Theory of Mind Development

As mentioned previously, children generally cannot pass false-belief tasks until 4 to 5 years of age. It is not until around this same age that children pass tests of the distinction between appearance and reality (Flavell, 2004). In the standard appearance-reality distinction task, a child is presented with an illusory object, such as a sponge that looks like a rock, and asked what the object looks like. The experimenter then lets the child touch the sponge and asks the child what the object feels like. The child is then asked to report both what the object looks like and what it really is. 3-year-olds tend to report the objects appearance when asked what it really is. Likewise, in color appearance-reality distinction tasks, 3-year-olds typically report an objects apparent color as its real color (Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1986). Interestingly, it is around the same time that children acquire knowledge of false-beliefs, the distinction between appearance and reality, and level 2 visual perspective-taking that they begin to deceive others (Baron-Cohen, 2001). By age 3, children understand simple causal relations among desires, outcomes, emotions, and actions. They seem to realize that people will feel good if they get what they want and feel bad if they do not. Furthermore, they seem to understand that a person will stop looking for a desired object if they find it and continue searching if they do not (Flavell, 1999). Despite an increasing

understanding of minds, it has been found that preschoolers are not aware that people continually experience spontaneous mental content; they do not attribute any mental activity to a person who is sitting quietly, waiting (Flavell, 2000). There has been some research on intracultural differences in the

development of ToM. Several studies on intracultural differences, including one by Perner, Ruffman and Leekman (1994), have found a correlation between family size and age of acquisition of a ToM. The researchers found that 3- and 4-year-old

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children from larger families were better than children from smaller families at predicting a story characters (mistaken) action based on a false belief (Perner et al., 1994). Other research has found that deaf children with hearing parents that are not fluent in sign language perform much more poorly on a false-belief task than deaf children with deaf parents fluent in sign language (Flavell, 1999). Both of those studies show the importance of social and linguistic interaction for the normal acquisition of a ToM. The most striking intracultural difference in the development of ToM is found in autistic children and adults. One of the core features of autism is deficits in knowledge of other minds (Baron-Cohen, 2001). The inability of autistics to pass false-belief and appearance-reality distinction tasks has been well-documented. Like all 3-year-olds and most 4-year-olds, autistics tend to report the appearance of an object as the reality of that object, and they do not know that a persons false belief, rather than reality, determines their behavior. Researchers have also revealed that, while both normally developing and autistic children understand that the brain has physical functions (such as producing bodily movement), autistic children do not seem to understand that the brain has mental functions as well (such as thinking and feeling) (Baron-Cohen, 2001). Finally, unlike normal children 3-years-of-age and older, autistics are unable to use others gaze-direction to infer their mental content. Taken together, these various findings have been interpreted as suggesting that a general deficit in ToM abilities may account for most of the social cognition deficits seen in autism. However, it is worth noting that not all autistics fail ToM tasks. Depending on the severity of the disorder, an autistic child may simply acquire ToM abilities later than normal children and higher-functioning autistics may

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experience little to no developmental delay in acquiring ToM abilities (Baron-Cohen, 2001). Though the bulk of ToM research is concerned with its development from infancy into middle childhood, a number of studies have investigated the effects of aging on ToM. In pioneering work, Happe et al. (1998) found that ToM reasoning is normal in the elderly. They presented a group of elderly and two control groups of college-aged people with short ToM stories about lies, bluffs, and persuasions, and then asked the participants to make inferences about the story characters mental states. Interestingly, the researchers found that the elderly performed better on the ToM tasks as compared to the university-aged controls (Happe et al., 1998). Contrary to Happe et al. (1998), Maylor, Moulson, Muncer and Taylor (2002) found significant age-related deficits in performance on ToM tasks in two experiments even after accounting for age-related differences in cognitive ability. The authors concluded that the observed age-related decline in performance on ToM tasks is consistent with the established deficits in frontal lobe function found in old age, and that further research would be needed to learn how executive function contributes to ToM reasoning (Maylor et al., 2002).

Theories of theory of mind There are at least three competing theories which aim to explain the development of childrens knowledge about the mind. The first, theory theory, holds that our everyday knowledge about the mind is an informal theory that is constantly being revised through experience. Thus, according to the theory theory, experience provides young children with new information not accounted for by their current ToM, forcing a revision and improvement of their theory. Several studies (Perner et

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al., 1994) that found a positive correlation between family size and age of acquisition of ToM seem to support the theory theorists claim that experience is crucial for the development of ToM. A child with many siblings to interact with should, according to the theory theory, have a more robust ToM than other children their age with smaller families, which is precisely what the studies found. In contrast to the theory theory, the modularity theory claims that children do not acquire a theory about mental representations. Rather, children acquire three modular mechanisms for distinguishing between agents and non-agent objects (Flavell, 20004). Furthermore, although experience is necessary to activate these three mechanisms, it does not determine their nature. In the first stage of acquisition infants learn within the first year that agents are self-propelled by an internal energy. Late in the first year, infants learn to understand agents as active perceivers of their environment with goals. Finally, the third mechanism allows infant in their 2nd year of life to understand agents as holding propositional attitudes, that is, mental states such as desiring this or pretending that (Flavell, 2000). Finally, according to the simulation theory children are aware of their own mental states and they use this awareness to infer the mental states of other people through role-taking or simulation. For example, during the false-belief task a child can predict what another child will mistakenly think is inside a container by mentally simulating what they themselves would think if they were in the other childs place. According to the simulation theorists, the development of ToM is really just an ability to make increasingly accurate simulations of other persons mental states. Like the theory theory, the simulation theory also holds that experience plays an important developmental role in ToM, as it is only through practice that a

Theory of Mind Development child can improve their simulation skills.

While all three of these theories are in

competition, it seems likely that a successful future theory of ToM will incorporate elements from all three perspectives (Flavell, 2004).

Neural correlates of theory of mind A key issue in ToM research is whether or not ToM reasoning is dependent on a core system with distinctive neural circuitry. If ToM abilities are subserved by a core neural system, then it follows that as performance places demands on other processing systems (such as language areas), failure on a ToM task might be due to impairments of the core ToM system (Siegal & Varley, 2003). Alternatively, failure on a ToM task may be due to an inability to recruit a component of a widely distributed system that is not solely dedicated to the computation of ToM-related mental states (Siegal & Varley, 2003). Numerous neuroimaging studies have shown that ToM tasks activate disparate brain regions, including the anterior paracingulate cortex (aPCC), left and right temporo-parietal junctions (l- and rTPJ), superior temporal sulcus (STS), temporal poles, inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), amygdala, and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) (Gallagher & Frith, 2003; Siegal & Varley, 2002). However, researchers have yet to determine which brain region is specific to ToM abilities. Various neuroimaging studies (Perner & Aichhorn, 2006; Samson et al., 2004; Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003; Saxe & Wexler, 2008; Vollm et al., 2006) and several review articles on the neurobiology of ToM (Gallagher & Frith, 2003; Siegal & Varley, 2002) have concluded that the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) mediates ToMreasoning in both verbal and nonverbal tasks (Vollm et al., 2006). Other research has indicated that the aPCC mediates ToM-reasoning (Gallagher & Frith, 2003). Complicating things further, some researchers have argued that the lTPJ and not the

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rTPJ is necessary for ToM, while others have argued for the opposite conclusion. Furthermore, though executive functions and language are important for the proper development of ToM, several studies seem to indicate that neither are necessary conditions for ToM reasoning. Gallagher and Frith (2003) have argued that the anterior paracingulate cortex (aPCC) underlies ToM abilities. Most ToM tasks are off-line paradigms, meaning that they require the participant to consider a scenario and then explain the behavior of the persons involved (such as the false-belief task described previously). However, several studies that have asked volunteers to use ToM reasoning in real time found that the aPCC is only activated during these real-time or on-line tasks. In the first study experimenters asked volunteers to play a computerized version of rock, paper, scissors while undergoing PET. The volunteers played the game under two different experimental conditions. In the first condition, the on-line one, volunteers were told that they were playing against a person and thus treated the experimenter as an agent with beliefs and goals. In the second condition volunteers were told that they were playing against a computer that uses a pre-determined, rules-based strategy, and so treated their opponent as a machine rather than an agent. Thus, the only difference between the two conditions is the attitude that the volunteer adopts towards his opponent. It was found that there was only one region of significant activation that differed between conditions the bilateral aPCC. In a second study, researchers observed activation in the aPCC of volunteers who cooperated with the person they were playing against, but not if they were playing against a computer (Gallagher & Frith, 2003). Brain regions near the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) have been implicated in a wide range of social cognition tasks. Regions near the TPJ preferentially respond to

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human and biological motion. A number of other studies have reported increased responses in the TPJ when participants read stories or looked at pictorial cartoons that require inferences about a characters false beliefs (Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003). Despite the role that the TPJ seems to play in ToM, some researchers concluded that it is not a core system for ToM on the basis of neuroimaging data which shows equal activation of the TPJ during both the ToM and control tasks. One explanation for this is that the control tasks typically involve making inferences about a characters behavior based on a true belief, which still requires ToM neural systems. Thus, as Saxe and Kanwisher note, because the non-ToM stories invite inferences about the characters (true) beliefs, a region involved in reasoning about other minds should show a high response to these stories, as well as to the so-called ToM stories (p. 1836). As a result, Saxe and Kanwisher proposed two tests for a region selectively involved in ToM reasoning: (1) The region must show increased response to tasks that require ToM reasoning compared with similar non-social controls, and (2) The region must respond both when a person is present in the stimulus and when participants reason about the persons mental state. With that in mind, the researchers compared the ToM condition to two non-social control conditions. The first control condition required the subject to infer a hidden physical cause, and the second condition was a description of a non-human object. The researchers found bilateral activation of the TPJ in response to stories requiring reasoning about others mental states as compared with stories about mechanical inference and non-human objects. Significantly, they also found that the TPJ did not respond to the presence of people in the stories, as evidenced by the lack of activation in the TPJ in

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response to stories involving descriptions of a persons physical characteristics (Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003). In contrast, Jason Mitchell has argued that the right TPJ is not selective for ToM, and may in fact play a role in attentional processes that are not specific to social contexts. A variety of studies have shown increased rTPJ activity when participants must shift attentional focus to reorient to task stimuli. Further evidence for the TPJs role in attention comes from neuropsychological data on spatial neglect which has been correlated with lesions of the TPJ (Mitchell, 2007). In fact, neglect is more common following lesions to the right TPJ than the left. To test his claims, Mitchell compared activity in the rTPJ during a ToM task and an attentional cueing task. He found greater activation in the rTPJ during ToM tasks as compared to controls. Additionally, greater activation was seen in the rTPJ during attentional cueing tasks in which participants had to press a key to report the location of an onscreen stimulus. However, Samson, Apperly, Chiavarino and Humphreys (2004)

have argued that the lTPJ is necessary for ToM on the basis of lesion studies. Three participants with lTPJ lesions were asked to perform a verbal and non-verbal falsebelief task. None of the participants performed above chance on either ToM reasoning task even when task-demand was controlled for given the cognitive status of the lesion patients participating (Samson et al., 2004). The superior temporal sulcus (STS) also underlies ToM, though its exact role is unclear. Some researchers have found that the right STS is associated with understanding the meaning of stories involving people (Gallagher & Frith, 2003). Other studies have found activation in the STS associated with the attribution of intentions to the movement of geometric shapes, taking the first-person

perspective, and explaining the behavior of others by recognizing their mental state

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(Gallagher & Frith, 2003). There have also been numerous functional neuroimaging studies that associate the perception of biological motion with activation in the SPS. Finally, other researchers have also found that selectively attending to facial emotions enhances activation in the right STS as compared with simply attending to a face (Gallagher & Frith, 2003). Based off of these and other findings, Gallagher and Frith (2003) have suggested that the STS is involved in detecting the behavior of agents and analysis of the goals and outcomes of this behavior. The aymgdala may also contribute to ToM abilities. A functional imaging study of social cognition found amygdala activation in response to untrustworthy faces whether or not the volunteer was explicitly judging trustworthiness. In contrast, the STS is only active during explicit judgments of untrustworthiness. Gallagher and Frith have suggested that the automatic response of the amygdala to socially salient stimuli may be important for the development of ToM because it allows a child to recognize that its mothers expression of fear is a cue for the child to find out what the mother fears (2007). Thus, while the amygdala may have a role in the normal development of ToM, it might not be necessary for having a ToM. The temporal poles are also consistently activated during ToM tasks (Vollm et al., 2006). The temporal poles are generally associated with visual and auditory episodic memory retrieval, and thus are thought to be a store for personal semantic and episodic memories (Gallagher & Frith, 2003). Though the temporal poles are activated during ToM tasks, Rosenbaum, Stuss, Levine and Tulving (2007) have argued that ToM does not depend on episodic memory. Evidence for this comes from ToM tasks performed by two amnesics, K.C. and M.L.. Both participants performance was indistinguishable from that of controls on all ToM-related tasks,

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despite extensive damage to both participants medial temporal lobes (Rosenbaum et al., 2007). Research into the contributions of the frontal lobes to ToM has revealed orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) activation during a ToM task that just required recognition of mental state terms. Two studies found activation in Brodmanns areas 8 and 9 (in the left medial prefrontal cortex) during a task involving deception and a task requiring inferences about a persons mental state (Siegal & Varley, 2002). Data from the study of lesion patients has not provided any conclusive information about the role of the frontal lobes in ToM. It has been suggested that, due to the similarities of deficits in social functioning seen between autistics and OFC lesion patients, that the OFC is part of the core system for ToM (Perner & Lang, 1999). However, a study by Stone, Baron-Cohen and Knight (1998) found no significant deficit in false-belief attribution among two patient groups: one group with dorsolateral and ventrolateral PFC lesions and another with bilateral OFC lesions. Although intact frontal lobes are a necessary condition for many aspects of social cognition, not all ToM-related tasks seem to require them. Several studies have documented dissociations between knowledge of false belief and the executive functions (EF) that the frontal lobes subserve. In one case study involving a frontal lobe lesion patient, false belief reasoning was found to be intact despite severe impairments in EF as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (Siegal & Varley, 2002). Further evidence for a dissociation between ToM and EF comes from research involving autistics who, though they tend to fail ToM tasks, can nonetheless inhibit responses and behaviors that are not relevant to the task (Siegal & Varley, 2002). These dissociations suggest that, while properly functioning frontal

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lobes may be important for the normal development and functioning of ToM, they do not directly mediate ToM abilities. In conclusion, ToM abilities involve disparate brain regions that subserve various cognitive capacities. As of yet, it is unclear which region (or regions) acts as the core neural systems for ToM. Unfortunately, most of the neurobiological data on ToM are from studies involving adults, due to difficulties in getting children to sit still and follow directions inside a scanning device. However, years of data from developmental research provides a timeline for ToM acquisition that begins before birth and continues at least into the middle-school years. Several studies that have investigated the effects of aging on ToM abilities have reported contradictory findings, with some claiming that the elderly perform better than college-aged controls on ToM tasks (Happe et al, 1998), while another study found that elderly people perform more poorly than college-aged controls (Maylor et al., 2002). Several theories have been offered to explain the development of ToM in humans, and it is likely that elements of each theory will form the future basis of a newer (and more complete) theory (Flavell, 2004). It is hoped that a future convergence of information from theorists, developmental psychologists, and neuroscientists will unravel exactly how and when children learn about other minds.

References Baron-Cohen, S. (2001). Theory of mind and autism: A review. International Review of Mental Retardation, 23, 169-204.

Theory of Mind Development Bloom, P. & German, T. (2000). Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of theory of mind. Cognition, 77, B24-B31. Borke, H. (1975). Piagets mountains revisited: Changes in the egocentric landscape. Developmental Psychology, 11(2), 240-243. Flavell, J., Green, F. & Flavell, E. (1986). Development of knowledge about the appearance-reality distinction. Monograph of the Society for Research in Child Development, 51(1), i-87. Flavell, J. (1999). Childrens knowledge about the mind. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 21-45. Flavell, J. (2000b). Development of childrens knowledge about the mental world. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 50(1), 15-23. Flavell, J. (2004). Theory-of-mind development: Retrospect and prospect. MerrillPalmer Quarterly, 50(3), 274-290. Gallagher, H. & Frith, C. (2003). Functional imaging of theory of mind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 77-83. Happe, F., Winner, E. & Brownell, H. (1998). The getting of wisdom: Theory of mind in old age. Developmental Psychology, 34(2), 358-362.

Maylor, E., Moulson, J., Muncer, A. & Taylor, L. (2002). Does performance in theory of mind tasks decline in age?. British Journal of Psychology, 93, 465-485. Mitchell, J. (2008). Activity in right temporo-parietal junction is not selective for theory-of-mind. Cerberal Cortex, 18, 262-271. Perner, J., Ruffman, T. & Leekam, S. (1994). Theory of mind is contagious: You catch it from your sibs. Child Development, 65, 1228-1238. Perner, J. & Lang, B. (1999). Development of theory of mind and executive control. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 337-344.

Theory of Mind Development Perner, J. & Aichhorn, M. (2006). Thinking of mental and other representations: The roles of left and right temporo-parietal junction. In R. Saxe & S. Baron-Cohen (Eds.), Theory of mind, (245-255). New York: Psychology Press. Rosenbaum, R., Stuss, D., Levine, B. & Tulving, E. (2007). Theory of mind is independent of episodic memory. Science, 318, 1257.

Samson, D., Apperly, I., Chiavarino, C. & Humphreys, G. (2004). Left temporoparietal junction is necessary for representing someone elses belief. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 299-300. Saxe, R. & Kanwisher, N. (2003). People thinking about thinking people: The role of the temporo-parietal junction in theory of mind. NeuroImage, 19, 18351842. Saxe, R. & Wexler, A. (2008). Making sense of another mind: The role of the right temporo-parietal junction. Neuropsyhologia, 43, 1391-1399. Siegal, M. & Varley, R. (2002). Neural systems involved in theory of mind, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3, 463-471. Stone, V., Baron-Cohen, S. & Knight, R. (1998). Frontal lobe contributions to theory of mind. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10(5), 640-656. Stuss, D., Gallup, G. & Alexander, M. (2001). The frontal lobes are necessary for theory of mind, Brain, 124, 279-286. Vollm, B., Taylor, A., Richardson, P., Corcoran, R., Stirling, J., McKie, S., Deakin, J. & Elliott, R. (2006). Neural correlates of theory of mind and empathy: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study in a nonverbal task, NeuroImage, 29, 90-98.

Theory of Mind Development Wimmer, H. & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young childrens understanding of deception. Cognition, 13, 103-128.