Modularity, Development and ‘Theory of Mind’
Mind & LanguagePublished 1 March 1999
Brian J. Scholl, Alan M. Leslie
Citations523
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score1.67
SNIP1.77
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
Study Snapshot
ObjectiveStudy objective
MethodsResearch methodology
PopulationPopulation studied
Sample sizeSample sizes
OutcomesStudy outcomes here
ResultsStudy results comes here
LimitationsResearch study limitations comes here
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
This paper attempts to clarify what a modular account of ToM entails, and why it is an attractive type of explanation, and explores how ToM might be grounded in a cognitive module and yet still afford development.
Abstract
Psychologists and philosophers have recently been exploring whether the mechanisms which underlie the acquisition of ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) are best characterized as cognitive modules or as developing theories. In this paper, we attempt to clarify what a modular account of ToM entails, and why it is an attractive type of explanation. Intuitions and arguments in this debate often turn on the role of develop‐ment: traditional research on ToM focuses on various developmental sequences, whereas cognitive modules are thought to be static and ‘anti‐developmental’. We suggest that this mistaken view relies on an overly limited notion of modularity, and we explore how ToM might be grounded in a cognitive module and yet still afford development. Modules must ‘come on‐line’, and even fully developed modules may still develop internally, based on their constrained input. We make these points concrete by focusing on a recent proposal to capture the development of ToM in a module via parameterization.
Keywords
PsychologyNeuroscience
CognitionDoes the autistic child have a “theory of mind” ?
8,438 Citations1985Simon Baron‐Cohen, Alan M. Leslie +1 more
A new model of metarepresentational development is used to predict a cognitive deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism.
CognitionBeliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception
6,320 Citations1983Heinz Wimmer
A travelling salesman found himself spending the night at home with his wife when one of his trips was unexpectedly cancelled, and he leapt out from the bed, ran across the room and jumped out the window.
Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information
5,805 Citations1982David Marr
David Marr's posthumously published Vision (1982) influenced a generation of brain and cognitive scientists, inspiring many to enter the field and making Marr's influential work available to a new generation of students and scientists.
Hospital PracticeThe Biological Foundations of Language
3,944 Citations1967Eric H. Lenneberg
It is rare that an author has the opportunity to reply to reviews of his book, and he feels particularly ho:~ored that his thoughts about language were the subject of this discussion by three authorities in the field, all highly respected by the profession and by myself.
Psychological ReviewPretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind."
3,154 Citations1987Alan M. Leslie
Choice Reviews OnlineBeyond modularity: a developmental perspective on cognitive science
2,643 Citations1993
The MIT Press eBooksThe Child's Theory of Mind
1,781 Citations1990Henry M. Wellman, Susan Carey +3 more
Cognitive ScienceMaturational Constraints on Language Learning
1,625 Citations1990Elissa L. Newport
This paper suggests that there are constraints on learning required to explain the acquisition of language, in particular, mului ultonol constraints, and suggests that language learning abilities decline because of the expansion of nonlinguisftc cognitive abilities.
British Journal of Developmental PsychologyThree‐year‐olds' difficulty with false belief: The case for a conceptual deficit
1,570 Citations1987Josef Perner, Susan Leekam +1 more
Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity In Cognition And Culture
1,372 Citations1994Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, Susan A. Gelman
Mind & LanguageWhy the Child's Theory of Mind Really Is a Theory
1,127 Citations1992Alison Gopnik, Henry M. Wellman
ManNatural Theories of Mind: Evolution, Development and Simulation of Everyday Mindreading.
1,093 Citations1992Andrew Lock, Andrew Whiten
(from the chapter) in the initial survey of tactical deception in primates (Whiten and Byrne, 1988a), the implications for primate psychology of obtaining good evidence which implied an understanding of others' intentions by the animal were emphasized.
Cambridge University Press eBooksToMM, ToBY, and Agency: Core architecture and domain specificity
1,083 Citations1994Alan M. Leslie
Child DevelopmentYoung Children's Understanding of Other People's Feelings and Beliefs: Individual Differences and Their Antecedents
885 Citations1991Judy Dunn, Jane R. Brown +3 more
The results support the view that discourse about the social world may in part mediate the key conceptual advances reflected in the social cognition tasks; interaction between child and sibling and the relationships between other family members are also implicated in the growth of social understanding.
CognitionDomain specificity in conceptual development: Neuropsychological evidence from autism
787 Citations1992Alan M. Leslie, Laila Thaiss
It is found that whereas autistic children perform very poorly on tests of the concept, believes, they are at or near ceiling on comparable tasks that test understanding of pictorial representation, which supports the existence of a specialized cognitive mechanism, which subserves the development of folk psychological notions, and which is dissociably damaged in autism.
CognitionPretending and believing: issues in the theory of ToMM
721 Citations1994Alan M. Leslie
Two early attitude concepts, pretends and believes, are discussed in the light of some current findings.
Psychological BulletinEthnopsychologies: Cultural variations in theories of mind.
579 Citations1998Angeline S. Lillard
Several aspects of European American theory of mind with other cultural models, as suggested by experiments and ethnographies, are compared with the purpose of illuminating the degree to which there is variation in folk psychology.
Developmental PsychologyCognitive factors and family structure associated with theory of mind development in young children.
561 Citations1996Jennifer M. Jenkins, Janet Wilde Astington
Child DevelopmentTheory of Mind Is Contagious: You Catch It from Your Sibs
542 Citations1994Josef Perner, Ted Ruffman +1 more
The MIT Press eBooksModularity in Knowledge Representation and Natural-Language Understanding
531 Citations1987
Thank you for downloading modularity in knowledge representation and natural language understanding, which will help people to enjoy a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon instead of juggling with some infectious bugs inside their desktop computer.
Children's Early Understanding of Mind: Origins and Development
462 Citations1994Charlie Lewis, Peter Mitchell
Journal of Child Psychology and PsychiatryDeafness, Conversation and Theory of Mind
431 Citations1995Candida C. Peterson, Michael Siegal
This study explored the development of a theory of mind in a group of 26 signing, prelingually-deaf Australian children of normal intelligence, aged 8-13 years, and revealed that 65% of these deaf children failed a simple test of false belief, which normal preschoolers, mentally retarded children, and other handicapped groups routinely pass at a mental age of 4-5 years.
Developmental ScienceInhibitory processing in the false belief task: Two conjectures
273 Citations1998Alan M. Leslie, Pamela Polizzi
Behavioral and Brain SciencesWhen is attribution of beliefs justified? [P&W]
212 Citations1978Zenon W. Pylyshyn
Child DevelopmentSocial Influences on False Belief Access: Specific Sibling Influences or General Apprenticeship?
211 Citations1996Charlie Lewis, N. H. Freeman +3 more
Two experiments examine a variety of factors in children's social environments, including daily contact with peers and adults as well as the numbers of their siblings, on a battery of false belief tests, suggesting that theory of mind is not simply passed from one sibling to another in a process of social influence.
Journal of Cognitive NeuroscienceReading the Windows to the Soul: Evidence of Domain-Specific Sparing in Williams Syndrome
165 Citations1998Helen Tager‐Flusberg, Jenea Boshart +1 more
This study tested the hypothesis that Williams syndrome, a rare genetic neurodevelopmental disorder with an unusual cognitive phenotype, involves spared abilities in the domain of understanding other minds and found evidence that mentalizing is a distinct cognitive domain.
ScienceThe Perception of Intention
163 Citations1989Verena Dasser, Ib Ulbæk +1 more
Two experiments explored the sensitivity of preschool children to intentional events that can be stated in terms of time and distance only and found that reversal of the roles of the balls produced more recovery of attention in the intentional case than it did in the nonintentional case.
Child DevelopmentConceptual Coherence in the Child's Theory of Mind: Training Children to Understand Belief
146 Citations1996Virginia Slaughter, Alison Gopnik
2 studies tested whether the child's theory of mind can be characterized as an intuitive theory: training on belief as well as training on desire and perception resulted in improved performance on a variety of standard theory ofMind posttests.
Cambridge University Press eBooksVarieties of off-line simulation
133 Citations1996Shaun Nichols, Stephen Stich +2 more
Development and PsychopathologyAutism and ostensive communication: The relevance of metarepresentation
117 Citations1989Alan M. Leslie, Francesca Happé
CognitionSolving belief problems: toward a task analysis
116 Citations1998Daniel Roth, Alan M. Leslie
This work finds that 3-year-old children show a pattern of success and failure on belief tasks that is not consistent with 'conceptual deficit' accounts, and develops specific proposals about task structural factors that either facilitate or hinder success in belief-content calculation.
Cambridge University Press eBooksUniversal and culture-specific properties of children's mental models of the earth
87 Citations1994Stella Vosniadou
Cambridge University Press eBooksTheories and modules: creation myths, developmental realities, and Neurath's boat
87 Citations1996Alison Gopnik
CognitionRealism and children's early grasp of mental representation: belief-based judgements in the state change task
77 Citations1995Rebecca Saltmarsh, Peter Mitchell +1 more
In a series of 4 experiments, it is shown that when children see the expected contents before these are swapped for something atypical, this not only makes it easier to report their own and a puppet's initial true belief but also auppet's current false belief.
British Journal of Developmental PsychologyPreschoolers' understanding of others' mental attitudes towards pretend happenings
77 Citations1997Anne K. Hickling, Henry M. Wellman +1 more
CognitionMaking explicit 3-year-olds' implicit competence with their own false beliefs
67 Citations1995N. H. Freeman, Hazel Lacohée
It was found in a series of studies that the memory trace is indeed available but is inaccessible under traditional testing procedures, and it was shown that an effective picture was one that reminded children of the content of the target belief and not one that would enable them to reconstruct the contextual cause of why they had held the belief.
Cognitive DevelopmentUnderstanding photos, models, and beliefs: A test of the modularity thesis of theory of mind
56 Citations1995Tony Charman, Simon Baron‐Cohen
Psychological BulletinCulture, variation, and levels of analysis in folk psychologies: Comment on Lillard (1998).
32 Citations1998Henry M. Wellman
Not only do folk psychologies differ for adults in different cultures, but naive psychological conceptions begin early in life and develop, and understanding cultural variation requires understanding these beginnings and developments.
Psychological BulletinCulture, development, and theory of mind: Comment on Lillard (1998).
21 Citations1998Mary Gauvain
In response to A. Lillard's (1998) suggestion that research on theory of mind does not adequately examine the cultural context of this thinking, the author proposes an extension of this view that emphasizes the development of theory ofMind in sociocultural context.
Behavioral and Brain SciencesNeural constraints on cognitive modularity?
21 Citations1997Brian J. Scholl