and language tasks. both language and theory of mind begin to develop around the same time in children (between ages two and five), but many other abilities develop during this same time period as well, and they do not produce such high correlations with one another nor with theory of mind. pragmatic theories of communication assume that infants must possess an understanding of beliefs and mental states of others to infer the communicative content that proficient language users intend to convey. since a verbal utterance is often underdetermined, and so it can have different meanings depending on the actual context, theory of mind can play a crucial role in understanding the communicative and informative intentions of others and inferring the meaning of words. some empirical results suggest that even 13-month-old infants have an early capacity for communicative mind-reading that enables them to infer what relevant information is transferred between communicative partners, which implies that human language relies at least partially on theory of mind skills. carol a. miller posed further possible explanations for this relationship. perhaps the extent of verbal communication and conversation involving children in a family could explain theory of mind development. such language exposure could help introduce a child to the different mental states and perspectives of others. empirical findings indicate that participation in family discussion predicts scores on theory of mind tasks, and that deaf children who have hearing parents and may not be able to communicate with their parents much during early years of development tend to score lower on theory of mind tasks. another explanation of the relationship between language and theory of mind development has to do with a child's understanding of mental-state words such as "think" and "believe". since a mental state is not something that one can observe from behavior, children must learn the meanings of words denoting mental states from verbal explanations alone, requiring knowledge of the syntactic rules, semantic systems, and pragmatics of a language. studies have shown that understanding of these mental state words predicts theory of mind in four-year-olds. a third hypothesis is that the ability to distinguish a whole sentence ("jimmy thinks the world is flat") from its embedded complement ("the world is flat") and understand that one can be true while the other can be false is related to theory of mind development. recognizing these sentential complements as being independent of one another is a relatively complex syntactic skill and correlates with increased scores on theory of mind tasks in children. there is also evidence that the areas of the brain responsible for language and theory of mind are closely connected. the temporoparietal junction (tpj) is involved in the ability to acquire new vocabulary, as well as to perceive and reproduce words. the tpj also contains areas that specialize in recognizing faces, voices, and biological motion, and in theory of mind. since all of these areas are located so closely together, it is reasonable to suspect that they work together. studies have reported an increase in activity in the tpj when patients are absorbing information through reading or images regarding other peoples' beliefs but not while observing information about physical control stimuli. theory of mind in adults neurotypical adults have theory of mind concepts that they developed as children (concepts such as belief, desire, knowledge, and intention). they use these concepts to meet the diverse demands of social life, ranging from snap decisions about how to trick an opponent in a competitive game, to keeping up with who knows what in a fast-moving conversation, to judging the guilt or innocence of the accused in a court of law. boaz keysar, dale barr, and colleagues found that adults often failed to use their theory of mind abilities to interpret a speaker's message, even though they were perfectly well aware that the speaker lacked critical knowledge. other studies show that adults are prone to "egocentric biases", with which they are influenced by their own beliefs, knowledge, or preferences when judging those of other people, or else they neglect other people's perspectives entirely. there is also evidence that adults with greater memory and inhibitory capacity and greater motivation are more likely to use their theory of mind abilities. in contrast, evidence about indirect effects of thinking about other people's mental states suggests that adults may sometimes use their theory of mind automatically. agnes kovacs and colleagues measured the time it took adults to detect the presence of a ball as it was revealed from behind an occluder. they found that adults' speed of response was influenced by whether or not an avatar in the scene thought there was a ball behind the occluder, even though adults were not asked to pay attention to what the avatar thought. dana samson and colleagues measured the time it took adults to judge the number of dots on the wall of a room. they found that adults responded more slowly when an avatar standing in the room happened to see fewer dots than they did, even when they had never been asked to pay attention to what the avatar could see. it has been questioned whether these "altercentric biases" truly reflect automatic processing of what another person is thinking or seeing, or whether they instead reflect attention and memory effects cued by the avatar, but not involving any representation of what they think or see. different theories seek to explain such results. if theory of mind is automatic, this would help explain how people keep up with the theory of mind demands of competitive games and fast-moving conversations. it might also explain evidence that human infants and some non-human species sometimes appear capable of theory of mind, despite their limited resources for memory and cognitive control. if theory of mind is effortful and not automatic, on the other hand, this explains why it feels effortful to decide whether a defendant is guilty or innocent, or whether a negotiator is bluffing, and economy of effort would help explain why people sometimes neglect to use their theory of mind. ian apperly and stephen butterfill suggested that people have "two systems" for theory of mind, in common with "two systems" accounts in many other areas of psychology. in this account, "system 1" is cognitively efficient and enables theory of mind for a limited but useful set of circumstances. "system 2" is cognitively effortful, but enables much more flexible theory of mind abilities. philosopher peter carruthers disagrees, arguing that the same core theory of mind abilities can be used in both simple and complex ways. the account has been criticised by celia heyes who suggests that "system 1" theory of mind abilities do not require representation of mental states of other people, and so are better thought of as "sub-mentalising". aging in older age, theory of mind capacities decline, irrespective of how exactly they are tested (e.g. stories, eyes, videos, false belief-video, false belief-other, and faux pas). however, the decline in other cognitive functions is even stronger, suggesting that social cognition is better preserved. in contrast to theory of mind, empathy shows no impairments in aging. there are two kinds of theory of mind representations: cognitive (concerning the mental states, beliefs, thoughts, and intentions of others) and affective (concerning the emotions of others). cognitive theory of mind is further separated into first order (e.g., i think she thinks that) and second order (e.g. he thinks that she thinks that). there is evidence that cognitive and affective theory of mind processes are functionally independent from one another. in studies of alzheimer's disease, which typically occurs in older adults, patients display impairment with second order cognitive theory of mind, but usually not with first order cognitive or affective theory of mind. however, it is difficult to discern a clear pattern of theory of mind variation due to age. there have been many discrepancies in the data collected thus far, likely due to small sample sizes and the use of different tasks that only explore one aspect of theory of mind. many researchers suggest that theory of mind impairment is simply due to the normal decline in cognitive function. cultural variations researchers propose that five key aspects of theory of mind develop sequentially for all children between the ages of three and five: diverse desires (dd), diverse beliefs (db), knowledge access (ka), false beliefs (fb), and hidden emotions (he). australian, american, and european children acquire theory of mind in this exact order, and studies with children in canada, india, peru, samoa, and thailand indicate that they all pass the false belief task at around the same time, suggesting that children develop theory of mind consistently around the world. however, children from iran and china develop theory of mind in a slightly different order. although they begin the development of theory of mind around the same time, toddlers from these countries understand knowledge access (ka) before western children but take longer to understand diverse beliefs (db). researchers believe this swap in the developmental order is related to the culture of collectivism in iran and china, which emphasizes interdependence and shared knowledge as opposed to the culture of individualism in western countries, which promotes individuality and accepts differing opinions. because of these different cultural values, iranian and chinese children might take longer to understand that other people have different beliefs and opinions. this suggests that the development of theory of mind is not universal and solely determined by innate brain processes but also influenced by social and cultural factors. historiography theory of mind can help historians to more properly understand historical figures' characters, for example thomas jefferson. emancipationists like douglas l. wilson and scholars at the thomas jefferson foundation view jefferson as an opponent of slavery all his life, noting jefferson's attempts within the limited range of options available to him to undermine slavery, his many attempts at abolition legislation, the manner in which he provided for slaves, and his advocacy of their more humane treatment. this view contrasts with that of revisionists like paul finkelman, who criticizes jefferson for racism, slavery, and hypocrisy. emancipationist views on this hypocrisy recognize that if he tried to be true to his word, it would have alienated his fellow virginians. in another example, franklin d. roosevelt did not join naacp leaders in pushing for federal anti-lynching legislation, as he believed that such legislation was unlikely to pass and that his support for it would alienate southern congressmen, including many of roosevelt's fellow democrats. empirical investigation whether children younger than three or four years old have a theory of mind is a topic of debate among researchers. it is a challenging question, due to the difficulty of assessing what pre-linguistic children understand about others and the world. tasks used in research into the development of theory of mind must take into account the umwelt of the pre-verbal child. false-belief task one of the most important milestones in theory of mind development is the ability to attribute false belief: in other words, to understand that other people can believe things which are not true. to do this, it is suggested, one must understand how knowledge is formed, that people's beliefs are based on their knowledge, that mental states can differ from reality, and that people's behavior can be predicted by their mental states. numerous versions of false-belief task have been developed, based on the initial task created by wimmer and perner (1983). in the most common version of the false-belief task (often called the "'sally-anne' test" or "'sally-anne' task"), children are told or shown a story involving two dolls, sally and anne, who have a basket and a box, respectively. sally also has a marble, which she places into her basket, and then leaves the room. while she is out of the room, anne takes the marble from the basket and puts it into the box. sally returns, and the child is then asked where sally will look for the marble. the child passes the task if she answers that sally will look in the basket, where sally put the marble; the child fails the task if she answers that sally will look in the box, where the child knows the marble is hidden, even though sally cannot know this, since she did not see it hidden there. to pass the task, the child