Theory of Mind
Theory of mind is a sort of developmental milestone in Western models of children’s social cognition. It is interesting to me because it seems both self-explanatory and highly abstract.
It seems self-explanatory at first in that it refers to a child’s theory about the mind; that is, what does the child understand about the human mind? That it exists? That they have a mind themselves? That others have minds, too? That others’ minds can have different information, thoughts, and perspectives than their minds?
As you can see, that got abstract pretty quickly!
So yes, theory of mind is quite abstract because, after all, it is about thinking. Insights into thinking can come from increased exposure to social interactions, storytelling and having to take many perspectives day-to-day. So, the degree to which young children experience these things is the degree to which they may differ in how well they develop theory of mind.
There is a “hallmark” assessment of theory of mind called the “false belief task,” which is a sort of interesting puzzle unto itself. It is not helpful to try to explain the task — it really is important to watch it instead.
Video: False Belief Test (duration: 3:54)
Captions were not provided for this third-party video, but YouTube’s auto-caption feature is enabled. If you require a transcript, please inform your instructor.
(Bolt, 2006)
So is this video accurate in its representation across all children?
By this point in the text, you will be aware that all thinking is cultural, so I’m sure your response to my question was a confident “no.”
Indeed, there has been much cross-cultural work on developingtheory of mind, and there is a lot of variation. The false belief task is trusted so much and used so often that it is even a tool to identify autism.
Neurodivergent Social Cognition
When we think about a strong link between social understanding and thinking skills or awareness, it may draw our attention to children with whom we have worked who are on the autism spectrum. That is because autism is partially defined by the American Psychiatric Association in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as having different patterns of social awareness and behaviours (2013).
From our perspective as a school, we must be aware that the conception of autism is partly socially constructed. The view of autism in the DSM-5 is not a neutral one but one that is culturally and politically rooted. It is identified as a pathology, and the problematic use of the term “normal” is part of the criteria listed in its identification, or indeed, diagnosis.
Culturally speaking, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) is not only a Western conception of what they refer to as “Mental Disorders” but also comes from Western Medicine. That is, medical science in itself has cultural parameters — many of which have come under close scrutiny and challenge by scholars, activists, and equity-seeking groups. Recent advocacy and research have led us as a society to rethink such a deficit model by encouraging the use of the term neurodivergent and thinking of ways that universal design may better meet the needs of all children.
Think back to the research spotlight reading for this chapter, which highlighted how to avoid normative expectations for social interaction, forge new pathways for understanding one another, and develop social cognition among all children. We must remember that children bring different strengths to tasks, and normative behaviours like eye contact and emphasizing verbal responses are not required to support children’s thinking and learning.
