Advanced Theory of Mind

The term theory of mind refers to beliefs about the mental world—to what people know or believe about beliefs, desires, emotions, and other mental states. Many basic forms of such understanding emerge early in development, and these early achievements have long been the most common focus of research on theory of mind. Development of theory of mind, however, is by no means complete by age five or six; rather, recent research documents a number of further developments that build on and extend the early forms of understanding. These further developments include understanding of second-order false belief (John thinks that Mary thinks . . . .), the capacity for higher-order recursive thinking (A thinks that B thinks that C thinks . . . .), understanding of interpretive diversity (two people may hold different beliefs about the same aspect of reality), understanding of opacity (the truth of some utterances depends on the utterance and not on the reality), the ability to interpret nonliteral utterances (e.g., lies, jokes, irony, sarcasm), and the ability to perceive the true emotion in instances of hidden or multiple emotions. Mastery of such knowledge typically extends across late childhood and adolescence, and, in some instances, even adults fall short of ceiling in their performance. Individual differences in understanding are, therefore, considerably more marked than is true in early childhood, and such differences have been shown to contribute to a number of other developments in both the cognitive and the social domains. This point holds true for typically occurring development, and it is often especially the case in clinical syndromes, most notably autism spectrum disorder or ASD. Theory of mind, including advanced theory of mind, is therefore of considerable pragmatic importance. Theory of mind also presents a number of important theoretical challenges, challenges that relate to central issues in developmental psychology. What is the nature of the underlying cognitive system that makes advanced theory-of-mind mastery possible? How does this system differ from the forms of knowledge available to the young child? And what are processes by which the initial system transforms into the advanced one? The sections to come will address these and other issues in the study of advanced theory of mind. In most instances the answers offered will be partial ones, and, therefore, needed directions for future research will be a continuing theme.