Hi, everyone!

I want to tell you about Theory of Mind. It's a theme that I liked it a lot when I studied it in the University in Psychology.

The theory of the mind is called the ability that people have to attribute to others what they are thinking, what they are feeling or intuiting directly what intentions or behavior they have. This capacity usually develops from 3-4 years of age.

This term was proposed by two scientific researchers, Premack and Woodruff (1978), to refer to the ability to explain, predict and interpret the behavior of others.

According to this theory, people can directly attribute wishes, intentions, emotions, knowledge or thoughts to other people and we realize if all that is different or not to what we ourselves think, feel, know, etc. Therefore, we make an internal representation of the mental states of other people.

To understand what people do or say, we put ourselves in their place to try to understand what is taking them or motivates them to act in that way. This is related to empathy. That is why if we know more that person, the more confidence we have, we can better know how he will act or what he will feel at certain moments.

At the beginning, the attribution of meaning to the actions observed in other people was explained by complex mechanisms related to memory, lived experiences and reasoning processes.

And later, mirror neurons were discovered, through which they could explain in a simpler way why this situation occurs.
Understanding the actions and intentions of others is a task that sometimes requires more elaborate processes, is done more directly and simply if you activate some neurons that we have.

A mirror neuron is a nerve cell that is activated in 2 situations:
1 - When we execute an action
2 - When observing an action performed by another person

In other words, the mirror neurons reproduce the same neural activity corresponding to the perceived action, without it being necessary for us to perform that action or behavior.

Therefore, the memory and our capacity for recognition that we have of different situations are important, since they are processes that allow us to store the actions (both ours and those of others). So these processes are essential for the functions of mirror neurons to be executed.

Sally-Anne Test

A test that is used a lot to assess whether a boy or girl is developing the theory of mind is the Sally-Anne Test.
To do it, you need two dolls. which are the characters Anne and Sally. A box, a basket and one ball:

The story is told to the child that Sally and Anne have a box and a basket:

Sally places a ball in the basket and then she leaves the room (we put the doll Sally the ball in the basket). Once Sally is gone, Anne takes the ball from the basket and puts it in the box (we change with Anne's doll, the ball to the box). Afterwards, Sally enters the room again and we ask the child: Where will Sally find the ball?

A child who is developing a good Mind Theory will say that Sally will look for the ball in the basket because she has not seen that Anne has changed her. However, there are children who are not able to intuit that and they will say that Sally will look for the ball in the box because they themselves have seen how Anne has moved it.

A exemple of this test:

This usually occurs in children who have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). People who develop this disorder are not able to realize what another person thinks or believes. It will be difficult for them to understand that others have their own thoughts that may be different from ours, or even different from reality. They do not distinguish between what is inside their mind and what is inside the mind of others.
The behaviors of others will be unpredictable, meaningless and difficult to understand. So, some people will find it hard to relate socially.
That people with ASD have difficulty, does not mean that they do not have this capacity. That is, they are NOT completely lacking in theory of mind. Simply, they do not develop it as well as other people and that is why they find it difficult to understand certain social situations.

Do not forget either that an ASD has 3 different levels, according to which a child will present more or less symptoms and will have more or less complications to relate people.

Some consequences that causes an ASD (Grade 1), formerly called Asperger's Syndrome, related to the theory of mind are the following:

• Difficulty in predicting the behavior of others
• Difficulty to realize the intentions of others and know the real reasons that guide their behavior
• Difficulty understanding the emotions of others, which will lead them to be less empathetic
• Difficulties to understand how their behaviors or comments affect other people and influence what others think of him.
• Difficulties to take into account the level of knowledge of a person on a given topic
• Difficulty to take into account the degree of interest of a person on a topic of conversation
• Difficulty in anticipating what others may think about their behavior
• Difficulty to lie and to understand deceptions
• Problems in the ability to plan
• They tend to show a lot of mental rigidity, showing great anxiety when there are changes in their routines or they have to face unforeseen events.
• Most of these people have a normal or even excellent IQ. They may possess extraordinary talents for music, drawing, calculation or memory.

To give you an idea of ​​these difficulties, a very famous television character that shows these characteristics of the Asperger is Sheldon Cooper (The Big Bang Theory):

But you have to remember that it's a series. The symptoms are presented in an exaggerated and even comical way. But having a type of ASD is not funny at all, since it's a mental disorder after all.

I leave other games that allow to analyze the development of the theory of mind in children: