other minds 2

8/6/2019 Other Minds 2

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/other-minds-2 1/10

12/05/2009 00:35:00

← Mental agents have goals, intentions, beliefs…is this part of core

knowledge?

• Do infants think human events are just sequences of actions, or do

they see them as intention driven goals?

•

← Ball and bear sitting on two podiums. Hand reaches for each object,

switches their position on the podiums. Then replaces the objects with new

objects.

• Babies look longer when a hand goes out towards a new object,

recognizing that the hand has a goal

• At 5 MONTHS infants know there is a goal (woodward)

• Infants can distinguish intentional from accidental. Onl intentional

are seen as goal-directed←

← Infants pay attention to social agents and reason about their intentions

• Infants represent social agents (animates) and objects (inanimates)

and have diff. expectations about each

←

← Experiment: Woodward, Phillips, Spelke

← Infants are habituated to an object going behind ascreen, and a

different object coming out

• They assume one object went in, and hit an object out from behind

the screen

← Then they see this happen, the contact, one object hititn ghte other,

without a screen. Then they see one object get close to hitting the other, but

not making contact, and then the second object moving. They look longer at

this.



← Same experiment done with humans, the infants are not surprised

because they do not associate that human locomotion works the same as

objects. Humans have different intentions.

←

← Experiment: Geregly and Csibra. By 12 months, infants attribute that

agents have goals and will pursue the most direct path to their goal.

←

← Meltzoff studies of observational learning:

• At 18 mos. Infants attempt to perform same actions on objects that

they see other people perform. What happens if other people try

and fail?

o Result: Infants initiate the GOAL of the actions, not the action

itself.

o Implication: infants imitate to replicate goals, not just simple

action sequences

←

← Gergely Bekkering, Kiraly

←



← Infants show 3 abilities to represent and reason about goal-directed

actions of other people

← 1. Determine goal from completed action (woodward)

2. Determine goal by rational analysis (gergely, bek, kiral)

← 3. Determine goal b analysis of intention (meltzoff)←

← Infants use representations of goal-directed action to:

← 1. Direct their attention to the things adults are looking at or acting on

(gaze following)

← 2. Learn words (Baldwin Studeis)

← 3. Learn functional propertied of objects (Meltzoff)

4. Learn conventional actions (gerg, bek, kiral)

Perner and Wimmer 1984

False Belief task

Sally puts a ball in a basket. Walks away. Anne puts the ball in a box. Sally

comes back, where does she look for the ball?

• Results: ages 2-3 sally will look in the box (where the ball actually

is)

• Ages 4+ sally looks in basket (where sally thinks the ball is)



Ages 2-3: say, ‘Johnny will think there’s a pencil’

Age 4+: say, ‘Johnny will think there are smartis’

• Young children develop a theory of mind at age 4

• Young children predict person’s actions accord with reality, not

false-beliefs



←

←

← Q: Why are False Belief tasks so hard?

←

← 1. Egocentrism? – focus on own POV←

← STUDY – Gopnik – Not own desire task

← Experimenter says – I love broccoli!

• Goldfish vs. Broccoli

• Experimenter says, Yum! Can you give me some?

Age 3: children prefer goldfish but give brocolli.

o Egocentrism not the problem!

←

← 2. Lack of knowledge of words “think” and “want”?

• used early

• understood at 3 years when apply to relation between

person/object

o “Johnny is thinking about his dog”

“Mary wants an apple”

o Young children don’t have trouble understanding NOT THIS

PROBLEM

←

← 3. Lack an understanding of propositional attitudes

• “Johnny thinks htat his dog is hungry”

(German) “Mary wants that she should eat an apple”

• “Johnny thinks that it’s raining” : true

• “It’s Raining” : false

o First statement is not false because he THINKS its raining.

But it is not, so second statement is false.

←

← 3-4 Years – Begin to understand propositional attitudes (think vs. is)

• key to viewing persons as having mental lives: representations of

world that are distinct form reality

←

←



← 18 Mos. : Children understand propositional attitudes in a different

context: pretense (Leslie, 1987)

← Don’t

understand this. But great graphic.

←

← Children don’t understand role of beliefs in pretense.

• “Johnny lives in Australia, no rabbits there. He’s never seen a

rabbit, never heard of one. He is hopping across the field, is he

pretending to be a rabit?” < 4 Years: “YES”

←

← How does an understanding of propositional attitudes develop?

• Language plays a role

• Use language to represent things you know from core knowledge,

“left of the blue wall”, combines landmarks (blue wall) and

geometric info (left)

• Core knowledge of mental agents, goals, intentions, transcended bylanguage, perhaps allows Theory of Mind

←

← Jill and Peter DeVilliers

• Successful false belief reasoning emerges at same time as

comprehension of sentences with embeddedc clauses

o “Peter said that the leaf is red”

2 things here, Peter said the leaf is red. And the leaf

actually being red. Two different concepts/facts in one

sentence.

←

← Does learning syntax/semantics of embedded sentences help children

to understand false beliefs?

← 1. Studies of deaf children



• children w/ delayed understandinf of sentences w/ embedded

clauses show delayed false belief reasoning

←

← 2. Training studies with young children

• 3 year olds trained to understna dsentences with embeddedclauses show enhanced false belief reasoning

←

← Thesis is controversial, here’s one way it might work:

←

←

←



Two candidate sources for uniquely human cognitive abilities:

1. Language (and language dependent concepts like number/math,

space/maps, models, mentalistic reasoning)

2. Mentalistic Reasonoing abiliies (result in rapid acquisition of

language/other culturally conveyed info and culture-specific skills)Either of these abilities could be source of other. Or both could contribute to

uniquely human knowledge/ cognitive abilities.



12/05/2009 00:35:00

←

other minds 2

Documents