Insights into Theory of Mind from Deafness and Autism

Peterson, Candida C.; Siegal, Michael

doi:10.1111/1468-0017.00126

Cited by 262 publications

(179 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…The same sequencing that Wellman and Liu found for U.S. children (see Figure 1) has been corroborated with other data from U.S. children , data from Australian children (Peterson et al 2005;Peterson & Wellman 2009) and data from deaf children (Peterson & Siegal 2000;Peterson, et al 2005). The scale has also been used with autistic children and children with Asperger's (Peterson, Wellman and Slaughter, 2012) and though the order between false belief and hidden emotion is reversed-with hidden emotion being easier to understand than false belief-the order between understanding diverse desire, diverse belief and knowledgeignorance is the same as in other populations studied (see Figure 1).…”

Section: Evidence From Theory Of Mind Taskssupporting

confidence: 88%

Belief Is Prior to Knowledge

Rosé¹

2015

Episteme

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Orthodoxy has it that knowledge is a composite of belief and non-mental factors. However, Timothy Williamson suggests that orthodoxy implies that the concept of belief is acquired before the concept of knowledge, whereas developmental data suggest the reverse. More recently, Jennifer Nagel reviews the psychological evidence, building a psychological case that the concept of knowledge emerges prior to belief. I assess the psychological state of the art and find support for the opposite conclusion. Overall the empirical evidence supports the orthodox view that the concept of belief is prior to the concept of knowledge.

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Section: Evidence From Theory Of Mind Taskssupporting

confidence: 88%

Belief Is Prior to Knowledge

Rosé¹

2015

Episteme

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“…First, deaf children with deaf parents develop false-belief understanding within the typical time frame, whereas deaf children with hearing parents do not do so (Peterson & Siegal 2000). Both sets of children engage in triadic social interaction, which is communicative even if nonverbal.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of studies have shown that deaf children with hearing parents are delayed in the development of false belief understanding, whereas deaf children with deaf parents are not delayed (Peterson & Siegal 2000;Woolfe et al 2002). This seems to be because deaf parents are native users of sign language and thus their children are exposed to normal conversation, but hearing parents are less fluent in sign language and therefore their children are not exposed to complex conversation about everyday events involving people's actions, beliefs, and emotions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…My point is that, defined in this way, language and social interaction/communication may play different and complementary roles in theory-of-mind development and, further, that there may be both individual and developmental differences in their relative importance. Some evidence exists in support of this suggestion.First, deaf children with deaf parents develop false-belief understanding within the typical time frame, whereas deaf children with hearing parents do not do so (Peterson & Siegal 2000). Both sets of children engage in triadic social interaction, which is communicative even if nonverbal.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children's social understanding within social interaction

2004

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Abstract:Theories of children's developing understanding of mind tend to emphasize either individualistic processes of theory formation, maturation, or introspection, or the process of enculturation. However, such theories must be able to account for the accumulating evidence of the role of social interaction in the development of social understanding. We propose an alternative account, according to which the development of children's social understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child's experience of the world as well as communicative interaction with others about their experience and beliefs (Chapman 1991;. It is through such triadic interaction that children gradually construct knowledge of the world as well as knowledge of other people. We contend that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children's social understanding. Increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states should facilitate the development of social understanding. We review evidence suggesting that children's understanding of mind develops gradually in the context of social interaction. Therefore, we need a theory of development in this area that accords a fundamental role to social interaction, yet does not assume that children simply adopt socially available knowledge but rather that children construct an understanding of mind within social interaction.Keywords: language; Piaget; social interaction; theories of mind; Vygotsky; Wittgenstein et al. 1998;Symons & Clark 2000), mothers' education (Cutting & Dunn 1999), and socioeconomic circumstances (Holmes et al. 1996).Furthermore, a number of studies have found correlations between language and social understanding (e.g., Cutting & Dunn 1999; de Villers 2000; Happé 1995;Jenkins & Astington 1996). In longitudinal studies, forms of family talk about mental states have been found to be related to later success on false belief tests (e.g., Brown et al. 1996;Dunn et al. 1991a;Ruffman et al. 2002). In addition, mothers who think of their children in mentalistic terms ("mindmindedness"), and therefore, presumably talk to their children about the psychological world, have children who are more advanced in understanding beliefs than are other children (Meins & Fernyhough 1999;Meins et al. 1998). Similar correlations between family interaction and the development of children's understanding of emotions have also been reported (e.g., Dunn et al. 1991b;Hooven et al. 1995;Kuebli et al. 1995;Steele et al. 1999). In a longitudinal study, Astington and Jenkins (1999) found that earlier language abilities predict later false belief performance but earlier false belief competence does not predict later language abilities, supporting the conclusion that language is important in social cognitive development.Another source of evidence that social interaction is important for the development of a mentalistic understanding comes from research with deaf children. A number o...

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“…It is frequently noted that deaf children have difficulties acknowledging that different people can hold different mental states regarding the same situation (Peterson & Siegal, 2000). The consequences of these difficulties can be inferred from deaf children's problems in relationships with peers.…”

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confidence: 99%

Anger communication in deaf children

Rieffe

Terwogt

2006

Cognition & Emotion

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In this study, we investigated how deaf children express their anger towards peers and with what intentions. Eleven-year-old deaf children (n 0/21) and a hearing control group (n0/36) were offered four vignettes describing anger-evoking conflict situations with peers. Children were asked how they would respond, how the responsible peer would react, and what would happen to their relationship. Deaf children employed the communicative function of anger expression differently from hearing children. Whereas hearing children used anger expression to reflect on the anguish that another child caused them, deaf children used it rather bluntly and explained less. Moreover, deaf children expected less empathic responses from the peer causing them harm. Both groups did, however, expect equally often that the relationship with the peer would stay intact. These findings are discussed in the light of deaf children's impaired emotion socialization secondary to their limited communication skills.

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Insights into Theory of Mind from Deafness and Autism

Cited by 262 publications

References 53 publications

Belief Is Prior to Knowledge

Belief Is Prior to Knowledge

Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children's social understanding within social interaction

Anger communication in deaf children

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