Why the child’s theory of mind really is a theory
Open accessAbstract
How do children (and indeed adults) understand the mind?In this paper we contrast two accounts.One is the view that the child's early understanding of mind is an implicit theory analogous to scientific theories, and changes in that understanding may be understood as theory changes.The second is the view that the child need not really understand the mind, in the sense of having some set of beliefs about it.She bypasses conceptual understanding by operating a working model of the mind and reading its output.Fortunately, the child has such a model easily available, as all humans do, namely her own mind.The child's task is to learn how to apply this model to predict and explain others' mental states and actions.This is accomplished by running simulations on her working model, that is observing the output of her own mind, given certain inputs, and then applying the results to others.The first position has a certain prominence; research on children's understanding of mind has come to be called 'children's theory of mind'.This position is linked to certain philosophers of mind such as Churchland (1984) and Stich (1983) who characterize ordinary understanding of mind, our mentalistic folk psychology, as a theory.It is also part of a recent tendency to describe cognitive development as analogous to theory change in science (Carey, 1985(Carey, , 1988;;Karmiloff-Smith & Inhelder, 1975; Wellman
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The theory of mind network is a set of brain regions engaged when a person attempts to infer somebody's mental state, with or without language.
“The most relevant to our current discussion is the theory of mind network [178], a set of brain regions that are engaged when their owner is attempting to infer somebody’s mental state (with our without the use of language; [179, 180]).”
From Dissociating language and thought in large language models (2024) · cites this paper as [178]
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- Authors
- GOPNIK, A., & WELLMAN, H. M.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- ORCID
- WELLMAN, HENRY M.
- Venue
- Mind & Language
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 1992-03
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 1-2
- Pages
- 145-171
- ISSN
- 0268-1064 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-0017
- OpenAlex
- W2159056499
- Cited by
- 1,158
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 26 · 2025: 44 · 2024: 56 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 38 · 2021: 44 · 2020: 83 · 2019: 42 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 38 · 2016: 36 · 2015: 29 · 2014: 37 · 2013: 32 · 2012: 32
- FWCI
- 86.60
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Locations
- Mind & Language (publishedVersion)
- Deep Blue (University of Michigan) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (8919916)
- Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University
- Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Keywords
- theory of mind, children, mental representation, folk psychology, cognitive development
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