Theory of Mind in Children

As teachers, we’ve all asked that question: “what would they have done in that situation?” Have you ever wondered why this may have been difficult or not even crossed a child’s mind?  I’m not saying this is an excuse for thoughtless behaviour and actions but perhaps an opportunity for you to take a moment to take a child’s inability or lack of support in taking another person’s perspective.

Theory of Mind (I’ll refer to this as ToM) is the ability to embed another individual’s mental states – where you are able to understand what beliefs another person may have about a situation.  For example, you are able to use clues to infer how a person may be feeling or what they may want.  A great example is an early false-belief task which has been used to measure parts of ToM – it has actually been used with children to see how they response.

Many researchers across the globe have investigated ToM in children and how it develops along with the ages of which it is developed – I’ve listed quite a few articles in the further reading section below, signposting to some of the many articles.  The Sally-Anne task, albeit a classical task, is not the only measure used today – neuroimaging techniques have been used to make a reductionist (narrowing it down to something very definitive) observation.

What is happening in their brain?

A recent study by Richardson and Saxe (2020) found the brain regions involved with ToM play a role with not just inferring other people’s feelings and thoughts but also predicting them.  The researchers also go on to say that the ToM brain regions make an increasing amount of predictions with age.  So what did they do?

They firstly gave what was called a ‘behavioural battery’ after an fMRI scan (a brain scan which allowed the researchers to see parts of the brain that was being used by lighting up – i.e., if you are scared, different parts of the brain would light up on the scan compared to riding a bike).  This ‘battery’ involved children listening to a story and answering 34 prediction and explanation questions about the beliefs, desires and emotions of the characters.  The purpose of this task was to see how the participants responded to different ToM concepts such as moral blameworthiness and second-order false-beliefs.

After this, the participants watched a silent version of an animated film twice (“Partly Cloudy” – a Pixar animation) as this film had previously been shown to drive the neural response in ToM brain regions in children.

You must remember, for the fMRI results to be accurate, the people inside must be very still and the researchers knew this and knew how children may feel anxious.  Therefore, they allowed them to hold a large plush stuffed animal. Richardson and Saxe (2020) say this helped relax the children and reduced their fidgeting.
Their findings showed a group of brain regions, similar to previous research, included the temporo-parietal junction, precuneus, and medial prefrontal cortex, linking to both inferring and predicting a person’s thoughts and feelings.

How does this help in the classroom?

There are many studies that indicate children with Autism have a deficient ToM and research has also found some children with low socioeconomic status have a weaker ToM compared to others.  However, it is important to take away the skills that are associated with ToM based on Richardson and Saxe’s (2020) paper and many other studies.

The main two that arise to me are prediction and inference.  Those teaching guided reading and following content domains in the UK will be familiar with these two as being separate skills within reading comprehension.  Many schools, including myself as a teacher, teach these content domains or skills explicitly.  For example, I’ve taught a whole lesson on the content domain, ‘prediction’ and ‘inference’ along with the other domains.  It may be worth using this to your advantage.

Key Stage 2 Content Domains

• Prediction
  • When teaching prediction, be it in reading lessons, PSHE, science, maths, history, geography etc., make explicit link to how cues and clues can help. Some children may just think, “oh that happens because it does”, help the children to be specific.
• Inference
  • Again, this can be taught, not only in reading lessons but in many others such as the ones mentioned above. My favourite phrase to use, particularly when children who are older, is ‘This suggests’.  What does it mean? How can you use the clues to explain what or why this has happened?
• Perspective-taking activities
  • Provide children with a concept/misconception – I regularly use Concept Cartoons for this – and different perspectives/answers with a reason to this concept and ask the children who they agree with and why. This can then lead to an investigation, leading to using concrete materials (if needed – i.e., for maths and science or even role-play with reading lessons!).
    • I have personally researched this and found a positive impact on ToM and Social Competence skills with Year 1 children! The articles are below.
• Counterfactuals
  • There have been different studies involving the use of counterfactuals or ‘what if’ reasoning. This would typically be used in older year groups in the primary age but there is no reason at all to why it cannot be adapted to younger year groups.  Examples could include:
    • What if we could only breath underwater and not on land?
    • What if there was a black hole next to the Earth and we still survived?
  • The importance of this questioning is to provoke a different type of thought with the children, taking a different viewpoint.

Article reviewed: Richardson, H., & Saxe, R. (2020). Development of predictive responses in theory of mind brain regions. Development Science, 23(1) https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12863

Further Reading

Ebert, S., Peterson, C., Slaughter, V., & Weinert, S. (2017). Links among parents’ mental state language, family socioeconomic status, and preschoolers’ theory of mind development. Cognitive Development, 44, 32-48 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2017.08.005

Wellman, H.M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: the truth about false belief. Child Development, 72(3) https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00304

Bianco, F., Lombardi, E., Massaro, D., Castelli, I., Valle, A., Marchetti, A., & Lecce, S. (2019). Enhancing advanced Theory of Mind skills in primary school: a training study with 7- to 8-year-olds. Infant and Child Development, 28(6) https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2155

Woolman, C. (2019). ‘Mindreading’ from primary science: using concept cartoons to develop theory of mind in 5–6-year-olds – a pilot study. Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 47(4) 395-409 https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2018.1489874

Woolman, C. (2017). Developing 5-6 Year olds’ Social Competence using Concept Cartoons: A Neurocognitive Approach. Journal of Applied Psychology and Social Science, 3(2) 90-123 http://ojs.cumbria.ac.uk/index.php/apass/search/authors/view?givenName=Callum&familyName=Woolman&affiliation=&country=GB&authorName=Woolman%2C%20Callum

Happé, F., Ehlers, S., Fletcher, P., Frith, U., Johansson, M., Gillberg, C., Dolan, R., Frackowiak, R., & Frith, C. (1996). ‘Theory of mind’ in the brain. Evidence from a PET scan study of Asperger syndrome. Clinical Neuroscience and Neuropathology, 8(1) 197-201 https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_2614672/component/file_2623710/content

Rafetseder, E & Perner, J. (2018). Belief and counterfactuality: a teleological theory of belief attribution. Zeitschrift fur Psychologie, 226, 110-121