examples of theory of mind in child development
Theory of mind Understanding of others' intentions is another critical precursor to understanding other minds because intentionality, or "aboutness", is a fundamental feature of mental states and events. The "intentional stance" has been defined by Daniel Dennett[18] as an understanding that others' actions are goal-directed and arise from particular beliefs or desires. Both 2- and 3-year-old children could discriminate when an experimenter intentionally vs. accidentally marked a box with stickers as baited.[19] Even earlier in ontogeny, Andrew N. Meltzoff found that 18-month-old infants could perform target manipulations that adult experimenters attempted and failed, suggesting the infants could represent the object-manipulating behavior of adults as involving goals and intentions.[20] While attribution of intention (the box-marking) and knowledge (false-belief tasks) is investigated in young humans and nonhuman animals to detect precursors to a theory of mind, Gagliardi et al. have pointed out that even adult humans do not always act in a way consistent with an attributional perspective.[21] In the experiment, adult human subjects made choices about baited containers when guided by confederates who could not see (and therefore, not know) which container was baited.
Zone of proximal development One example of children using ZPD is when they are learning to speak. As their speech develops, it influences the way the child thinks, which in turn also influences the child's manner of speaking.[8] Wells gives the example of dancing: when a person is learning how to dance, they look to others around them on the dance floor and imitate their moves. A person does not copy the dance moves exactly, but takes what they can and adds their own personality to it.[16]
Egocentrism The main concept infants and young children learn by beginning to show egocentrism is the fact that their thoughts, values, and behaviors are different from those of others, also known as the theory of mind.[9] Initially when children begin to have social interactions with others, mainly the caregivers, they misinterpret that they are one entity, because they are together for a long duration of time and the caregivers often provide for the children's needs. For example, a child may misattribute the act of their mother reaching to retrieve an object that they point to as a sign that they are the same entity, when in fact they are actually separate individuals. As early as 15 months old,[5] children show a mix of egocentrism and theory of mind when an agent acts inconsistently with how the children expect him to behave. In this study the children observed the experimenter place a toy inside one of two boxes, but did not see when the experimenter removed the toy from the original box and placed it in the other box, due to obstruction by a screen. When the screen was removed the children watched the experimenter reach to take the toy out of one of the boxes, yet because the children did not see the switching part, they looked at the experimenter's action much longer when she reached for the box opposite to the one she originally put the toy in. Not only does this show the existence of infants' memory capacity, but it also demonstrates how they have expectations based on their knowledge, as they are surprised when those expectations are not met.
Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development There have been critiques of the theory from several perspectives. Arguments include that it emphasizes justice to the exclusion of other moral values, such as caring;[10] that there is such an overlap between stages that they should more properly be regarded as separate domains; or that evaluations of the reasons for moral choices are mostly post hoc rationalizations (by both decision makers and psychologists) of essentially intuitive decisions.[11]