Research on theory of mind increasingly encompasses apparently contradictory findings. In particular, in initial studies, older preschoolers consistently passed false-belief tasks—a so-called “definitive” test of mentalstate understanding—whereas younger children systematically erred. More recent studies, however, have found evidence of false-belief understanding in 3-year-olds or have demonstrated conditions that improve children’s performance. A meta-analysis was conducted ( N � 178 separate studies) to address the empirical inconsistencies and theoretical controversies. When organized into a systematic set of factors that vary across studies, false-belief results cluster systematically with the exception of only a few outliers. A combined model that included age, country of origin, and four task factors (e.g., whether the task objects were transformed in order to deceive the protagonist or not) yielded a multiple R of .74 and an R 2 of .55; thus, the model accounts for 55% of the variance in false-belief performance. Moreover, false-belief performance showed a consistent developmental pattern, even across various countries and various task manipulations: preschoolers went from below-chance performance to above-chance performance. The findings are inconsistent with early competence proposals that claim that developmental changes are due to tasks artifacts, and thus disappear in simpler, revised false-belief tasks; and are, instead, consistent with theoretical accounts that propose that understanding of belief, and, relatedly, understanding of mind, exhibit genuine conceptual change in the preschool years.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1132444.pdf

Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false belief.

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Ethnicity without Groups 2. Beyond "Identity" 3. Ethnicity as Cognition 4. Ethnic and Nationalist Violence 5. The Return of Assimilation? 6. "Civic" and "Ethnic" Nationalism 7. Ethnicity, Migration, and Statehood in Post-Cold War Europe 8. 1848 in 1998: The Politics of Commemoration in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia Notes References Index

/pdf/ethnicity-without-groups-34krft0iw6.pdf

Ethnicity without Groups

The question of what makes a concept coherent (what makes its members form a comprehensible class) has received a variety of answers. In this article we review accounts based on similarity, feature correlations, and various theories of categorization. We find that each theory provides an inadequate account of conceptual coherence (or no account at all) because none provides enough constraints on possible concepts. We propose that concepts are coherent to the extent that they fit people's background knowledge or naive theories about the world. These theories help to relate the concepts in a domain and to structure the attributes that are internal to a concept. Evidence of the influence of theories on various conceptual tasks is presented, and the possible importance of theories in cognitive development is discussed.

/pdf/the-role-of-theories-in-conceptual-coherence-456zncufwj.pdf

The role of theories in conceptual coherence.

Empathy accounts for the naturally occurring subjective experience of similarity between the feelings expressed by self and others without loosing sight of whose feelings belong to whom. Empathy involves not only the affective experience of the other person’s actual or inferred emotional state but also some minimal recognition and understanding of another’s emotional state. In light of multiple levels of analysis ranging from developmental psychology, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical neuropsychology, this article proposes a model of empathy that involves parallel and distributed processing in a number of dissociable computational mechanisms. Shared neural representations, self-awareness, mental flexibility, and emotion regulation constitute the basic macrocomponents of empathy, which are underpinned by specific neural systems. This functional model may be used to make specific predictions about the various empathy deficits that can be encountered in different forms of social and neu...

The functional architecture of human empathy

Temporal construal theory states that distant future situations are construed on a higher level (i.e., using more abstract and central features) than near future situations. Accordingly, the theory suggests that the value associated with the high-level construal is enhanced over delay and that the value associated with the low-level construal is discounted over delay. In goal-directed activities, desirability of the activity's end state represents a high-level construal, whereas the feasibility of attaining this end state represents a low-level construal. Study 1 found that distant future activities were construed on a higher level than near future activities. Studies 2 and 3 showed that decisions regarding distant future activities, compared with decisions regarding near future activities, were more influenced by the desirability of the end state and less influenced by the feasibility of attaining the end state. Study 4 presented students with a real-life choice of academic assignments varying in difficulty (feasibility) and interest (desirability). In choosing a distant future assignment, students placed relatively more weight on the assignment's interest, whereas in choosing a near future assignment, they placed relatively more weight on difficulty. Study 5 found that distant future plans, compared with near future plans, were related to desirability of activities rather than to time constraints. In everyday life, people judge and make decisions about events that will take place either in the relatively near future or in the distant future. For example, one may need to decide whether to take a vacation, give a lecture, or attend a conference a few months in advance or just a few days in advance. This article addresses the question of how temporal distance from an event affects people's decisions regarding that event. We argue that distant future events are construed on a higher level (i.e., by using more central and abstract features of the event) than near future events. Therefore, decisions regarding distant future events are likely to be based on relatively central and

The role of feasibility and desirability considerations in near and distant future decisions: A test of temporal construal theory.

http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~bctill/papers/learning/Tanaka_Taylor_1991.pdf

Object categories and expertise: Is the basic level in the eye of the beholder?

Category labels and social reality: Do we view social categories as natural kinds?

The relation between early fantasy/pretense and children's knowledge about mental life was examined in a study of 152 3- and 4-year-old boys and girls. Children were interviewed about their fantasy lives (e.g., imaginary companions, impersonation of imagined characters) and were given tasks assessing their level of pretend play and verbal intelligence. In a second session 1 week later, children were given a series of theory of mind tasks, including measures of appearance-reality, false belief, representational change, and perspective taking. The theory of mind tasks were significantly intercorrelated with the effects of verbal intelligence and age statistically controlled. Individual differences in fantasy/pretense were assessed by (1) identifying children who created imaginary characters, and (2) extracting factor scores from a combination of interview and behavioral measures. Each of these fantasy assessments was significantly related to the theory of mind performance of the 4-year-old children, independent of verbal intelligence.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1131670

The relation between individual differences in fantasy and theory of mind

Preface 1. Introduction 2. What Are Imaginary Companions Like? 3. The Characteristics of Children Who Create Imaginary Companions 4. Why Do Children Create Imaginary Companions? 5. Do Children Think Their Imaginary Companions Are Real? 6. What Happens to the Imaginary Companions Created in Early Childhood? 7. Do Older Children and Adults Create Imaginary Companions? 8. Fantasy in the Lives of Children and Adults Notes References Acknowledgments Permissions Index

Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them

Children's attention to knowledge-acquisition events was examined in 4 experiments in which children were taught novel facts and subsequently asked how long they had known the new information. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds tended to claim they had known novel animal facts for a long time and also reported that other children would know the novel facts. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, using facts associated with chemistry demonstrations. In Experiments 3 and 4, children were taught new color words. 5-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, distinguished between novel and familiar color words, reporting they had not known the novel words before the test session, but they had always known the familiar words. 4-year-olds in Experiment 4 were better able to distinguish novel and familiar color words when the teaching of the novel words was an explicit and salient part of the procedure.

Marjorie Taylor

Papers

Object categories and expertise: Is the basic level in the eye of the beholder?

Category labels and social reality: Do we view social categories as natural kinds?

The relation between individual differences in fantasy and theory of mind

Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them

Children's understanding of knowledge acquisition: the tendency for children to report that they have always known what they have just learned.