Materials for class discussion are below. You do not need to read/watch anything before class.
“Mind Reading: Human Origins and Theory of Mind” by Juliane Kaminski
Discussion
The Heider-Simmel illusion
Tell the story of the movie in a few sentences.
From: Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944) An experimental study in apparent behavior. The American Journal of Psychology, 57, 243-259.
Kaminski, 2017. Reading Other Minds. In: Shepherd, S.V. (2017) The Wiley Handbook of Evolutionary Neuroscience. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (pp. 514-525; Chapter 19) [SWEM] [PDF] This is a 10 page book chapter.
ToM and literacy
Dore, R. A., Amendum, S. J., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2018). Theory of mind: A hidden factor in reading comprehension?. Educational Psychology Review, 30(3), 1067-1089. [PDF]
Theory of mind is the understanding that other people have mental states that drive their actions and that those mental states can be different from one’s own. Without understanding theory of mind and being able to take others’ perspectives, it could be difficult for children to read and understand narrative texts. This paper posits that children’s understanding of others’ minds may be a potential missing piece in current accounts of reading comprehension. Indeed, the typical progression of children’s theory of mind abilities across childhood is closely aligned with the development of narrative processing skills. Furthermore, emerging evidence shows that both narrative processing and theory of mind are predictive of children’s reading comprehension….
Great apes and false beliefs
Krupenye, C., Kano, F., Hirata, S., Call, J. and Tomasello, M., 2016. Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs. Science, 354(6308), pp.110-114. [PDF]
Abstract: Humans operate with a “theory of mind” with which they are able to understand that others’ actions are driven not by reality but by beliefs about reality, even when those beliefs are false. Although great apes share with humans many social-cognitive skills, they have repeatedly failed experimental tests of such false-belief understanding. We use an anticipatory looking test (originally developed for human infants) to show that three species of great apes reliably look in anticipation of an agent acting on a location where he falsely believes an object to be, even though the apes themselves know that the object is no longer there. Our results suggest that great apes also operate, at least on an implicit level, with an understanding of false beliefs.
Further Reading
Dally, J.M., Emery, N.J. and Clayton, N.S., 2010. Avian Theory of Mind and counter espionage by food-caching western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica). European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 7(1), pp.17-37.
Frith, C. and Frith, U., 2005. Theory of mind. Current Biology, 15(17), pp.R644-R645. [PDF]
Computational Neuroscience 