theory of mind

• tom - the ability to attribute mental states to ourselves and others
• our ability to understand that other people think and feel different things to us
• stages of tom -

  understanding wanting

  understanding thinking

  understanding seeing leads to knowing

  understanding false beliefs

  understanding hidden feelings
• false belief task - assess the age at which a child can understand that others have beliefs that aren't theres

  distinhuish between true beliefs and childs awareness of others beliefs
• first order - false belief task - smarties task - asses the realisation that it is possible to hold false beliegs about real events
• second order - assess a childs understanding that a persons belief about a situation can be different from their own
• sally anne task - sally puts marble in basket - sally leaves - anne moved marble into box - child asked where sally would look for the marble - 3yr old assumes sally knows what they know - 4yr old knows sally has a different pov
• cons - cultural biases and norms - western v non western - emotional expectations
• cons - not all children with autism lack theory of mind - cannot be generalised to all children
• cons - lacks validity - way the study is run impacts results
• pros - real world application - tom used to assess autism