Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Theory of Mind and Behavior

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Theory of Mind and Behavior

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Theory of Mind and Behavior
AMANDA C. BRANDONE

Abstract
The capacity to understand and reason about the unobservable mental states (e.g.,
thoughts, desires, and beliefs) of oneself and others, known as theory of mind (ToM),
is central to human social cognition. Multidisciplinary interest in ToM stems from its
potentially unique human nature, the role it plays in our ability to engage in complex
social interactions, and its impairment in psychiatric and developmental disorders,
such as autism. Through more than 30 years of research, we have learned a great deal
about how and when children come to reason about others in terms of their mental
states. This essay reviews foundational research on the development of ToM reasoning during childhood; outlines cutting-edge findings on the infant origins and neural
correlates of ToM; and finally discusses key issues for future research, including reconciling infant competence with evidence of protracted conceptual development in
early childhood, expanding our neuroscientific understanding of ToM and its development, and shedding light on the use and individual variability of ToM in everyday
life. Pursuing these goals will address important theoretical questions and provide
critical new insight into the origins, development, neural basis, and social and behavioral consequences of ToM.

INTRODUCTION
Human cognition and experience are intensely social. We spend much of our
time interacting with social partners and thinking about their words, actions,
and thoughts. The ease with which we engage in these processes is owed in
part to our theory of mind.
Theory of mind (ToM; also referred to as folk psychology or mind reading) is
the capacity to infer and reason about unobservable mental states, such as
thoughts, desires, and beliefs, in oneself and others. This complex cognitive
phenomenon encompasses several interrelated components. First, one must
recognize the existence of mental states and their unique nature. Mental
states are unobservable, immaterial, subjective, and sometimes inconsistent
with reality. Second, one must understand how mental states come about,
relate to one another, and explain behavior. Consider the case of Romeo

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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whose belief that Juliet was dead (based on his perception of her lifeless body)
and desire not to live without her caused him to take his own life.
Questions regarding the evolution, development, biological basis, and
consequences of ToM have proven to be of interest in a range of fields including philosophy, primatology, and psychology (e.g., developmental, clinical,
neuroscience). Interest stems from several sources. First, ToM is an important
cognitive achievement underpinning our ability to engage in complex social
interactions (Moore & Frye, 1991): communication, cooperation, empathy,
social learning, and moral reasoning, all utilize ToM, as do less virtuous
goals like deception and lying. Second, deficits or impairments in ToM
have been implicated in psychiatric and developmental disorders including
schizophrenia and autism. The social and communication challenges faced
by people with autism provide a particularly salient demonstration of
cognition in the absence of ToM (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985). Third,
ToM plays prominently in models of what makes human cognition unique.
Although some aspects are thought to be shared with other species, the
special collection of ToM abilities in humans has been hypothesized to
underlie uniquely human social cognition and cultural intelligence (Call &
Tomasello, 2008). Finally, interest stems from the mystery of the basic
phenomenon of ToM: How is it possible to know the minds of others when
we never have direct access to the thoughts, desires, and beliefs that they
contain?
This essay reviews key findings and emerging trends from over three
decades of multidisciplinary research on how people come to understand
their own and others’ minds.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
THE CLASSIC APPROACH: REASONING ABOUT FALSE BELIEF
In 1978, Premack and Woodruff launched the field of ToM with the paper
“Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?” In a commentary on that
initial paper, Dennett (1978) proposed what is now considered the gold
standard measure of ToM. Dennett argued that it is impossible to determine
whether an individual (chimpanzee or human) is imputing the mental
state of another in situations in which the other’s mental state is consistent
with reality or shared with the individual. A true test of ToM requires that
the individual act on a mental state that conflicts with his or her own. In
particular, Dennett proposed that studies should examine situations in
which a subject has to make judgments about an agent who sees, knows,
wants, or believes something different from himself. This proposal inspired

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the now classic task used to examine ToM in children (Wimmer & Perner,
1983).
Consider this scenario. A boy named Maxi has a piece of chocolate. He puts
it in the cupboard and goes outside. While he is outside, his mother finds the
chocolate and moves it to the drawer. Maxi returns and wants his chocolate.
Where will Maxi look for his chocolate? The answer may seem obvious, but
note the false belief in this situation: Maxi believes falsely that his chocolate is
in the cupboard. To respond correctly, one must recognize that Maxi’s mental state is inconsistent with one’s own and with reality. Another commonly
used procedure examines false beliefs about the contents of a container. For
example, participants see a crayon box that they learn is filled with candles.
They are then asked what someone who has never seen inside will think the
box holds. To answer correctly, one must set aside knowledge of reality to
attribute a false belief to the other person.
Studies using these and related tasks have provided a consistent pattern
of results (see Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001 for a review). Children 4–5
years and older typically pass standard false-belief tasks by acknowledging
the other person’s false belief (e.g., Maxi will look incorrectly in the cupboard;
the person will erroneously think the box holds crayons). Younger children,
however, typically fail these tasks: they report that the character’s actions
and beliefs will correspond to reality (e.g., Maxi will look in the drawer; the
person will think the box holds candles) failing to recognize the representational nature of beliefs. Recent meta-analyses have revealed that methodological variations to the task can make it slightly harder or easier, and that
testing children who differ in cultural–linguistic community will produce
slightly different ages of transition. Nevertheless, the basic findings remain
the same: Children move from below-chance to above-chance performance
during the preschool years (Wellman et al., 2001). These findings suggest that
ToM undergoes a major change during early childhood (Wellman, 1990). The
claim is that not until roughly age 5 do children “understand that people live
their lives in a mental world as much as in a world of real situations and
occurrences” (Wellman et al., 2001, p. 656).
REAL-WORLD CONSEQUENCES OF FALSE BELIEF
An initial question that arises from the studies of false-belief understanding
is whether the false-belief task is a meaningful measure of ToM. One way to
approach this question is to examine whether false-belief performance has
any measurable social consequences. Given that ToM serves as the foundation for our ability to engage in complex social interactions, performance

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on false-belief tasks should correspond to real-world differences in behavior. Research confirms this: Differences in false-belief understanding during preschool independently predict several aspects of social development
including communicative competence, social competence, and peer interactions (see Astington, 2003 for a review). The link between false-belief performance and social behavior can also be observed in the case of autism.
Children with autism perform significantly less well on false-belief tasks than
control children with similar levels of intellectual disability, and show specific, disproportionate social and communicative deficits (Baron-Cohen et al.,
1985). Finally, the ecological validity of false-belief tasks is highlighted by the
fact that when children pass these tests, they also demonstrate other evidence
of ToM knowledge, including talking about what people think, know, and
want, appreciating the immaterial nature of mental entities, and engaging in
deception and lying to manipulate others’ mental states (see Wellman, 1990
for a review). Together, these findings confirm the utility of the false-belief
task and the real-life consequences of ToM.
ToM BEFORE FALSE BELIEF
Another key question raised by the developmental change in false-belief
performance concerns the state of ToM knowledge before success on the
false-belief task. It is not the case that younger children have no understanding of mental states and that passing the false-belief test marks the onset of
ToM. In contrast, an extensive literature suggests that children experience a
sequence of conceptual insights along the path to mature ToM.
Consider first the case of understanding visual experience. Seeing is relevant to ToM because visual experience influences what we think and know,
and visual perspective taking represents one form of ToM reasoning. By 2–3
years, children recognize that people with different lines of sight might see
different things (Masangkay et al., 1974), and even toddlers show evidence of
attributing visual experience to others by following an adult’s gaze around a
barrier to verify that they are seeing the same thing (Moll & Tomasello, 2004).
Before success on the false-belief task, children also show understanding
of knowledge and its relation to experience. By 3 years, children know that
perceptual experience determines what objects and events a person knows
about (Pillow, 1989), and even toddlers understand something about others’
knowledge states in the sense of knowing which objects others have and have
not experienced (Tomasello & Haberl, 2003).
A large literature suggests that young children also show sensitivity to the
desires, goals, and intentions of others. Two-year-olds understand that when
people want something, they behave in a manner consistent with the fulfillment of that desire (e.g., if Sam wants his rabbit, he will search for it) and

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experience emotions related to that desire (e.g., Sam will be sad if he cannot
find it; Wellman & Woolley, 1990). Toddlers also show some understanding
of desires and their subjective nature (Repacholi & Gopnik, 1997).
The earliest evidence of ToM reasoning in children, however, comes from
studies examining infants’ understanding of the intentional, goal-directed
nature of human action. During the first year, infants interpret human
action by considering more than just its surface-behavioral properties. Early
in the first year, infants appreciate that reaching actions are goal-directed
(i.e., directed toward particular objects, not locations in space; Woodward,
1998). Later in the first year, infants also appreciate the intentional nature of
human actions (i.e., that actions are motivated by internal causes; Brandone
& Wellman, 2009). Importantly, longitudinal studies show that individual
differences in attention to intentional action in infancy predict preschool
ToM as measured by the false-belief task (Wellman, Lopez-Duran, LaBounty,
& Hamilton, 2008). These findings suggest that intention understanding in
infancy is in fact a developmental precursor of a later, more mature ToM.
In sum, evidence confirms that although success on the standard false-belief
task is not achieved until roughly 4–5 years, the origins of ToM lie in infancy:
Children proceed through a standard sequence of conceptual achievements
along the path to false-belief understanding (Wellman & Liu, 2004)—moving
from an initial understanding of the intentional nature of action to increasingly rich concepts of desire, knowledge, and belief.
ToM AFTER FALSE BELIEF
Just as success on the false-belief task does not represent the onset of ToM,
false-belief performance also does not represent ToM’s culmination (see
Miller, 2012 for a review). Mastery of second-order false belief—the capacity
to understand what one person believes (usually falsely) about another
person’s beliefs (e.g., I think that he thinks that there are crayons in the box;
Perner & Wimmer, 1985)—occurs consistently later than the standard task
at roughly 5–7 years. Beyond preschool, children also experience changes in
their concepts of the nature and diversity of thought. Near age 7, children
recognize that thought is characterized by a constant flow of ideas and
that people are almost always thinking. At roughly the same age, children
begin to demonstrate an understanding of interpretive diversity—or “an
appreciation that one and the same thing can be assigned different meanings
by different persons”—as in the case of the Rorschach inkblots or other
ambiguous stimuli (Carpendale & Chandler, 1996, p. 1703). These achievements provide evidence of a broader understanding that the mind does
not just passively receive information, but rather is active and constructive.
Further evidence of the development of advanced ToM abilities can be seen

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in improvements with age in reasoning about complex linguistic devices
such as sarcasm and irony, interpreting social faux pas, reasoning about
ambiguous social scenarios, and applying an awareness of the mind toward
accomplishing cognitive tasks. Thus, although ToM research has been
concentrated in early childhood, it is clear that understanding ToM and its
application in social situations develops throughout childhood and into
adulthood.
EXPLAINING ToM DEVELOPMENT
There are at least two classes of variables that explain individual differences
in ToM. The first includes family variables. ToM development is enhanced
when the family environment draws attention to the fact that mental states
exist and can vary across individuals. For example, conversations with parents about mental states, mothers’ tendency to focus on their children’s own
mental states, and children’s experience with siblings influence how quickly
children meet ToM milestones (Dunn & Brophy, 2005).
Second, ToM is also related to two key cognitive constructs: executive
functions and language. Executive functions are the cognitive processes
involved in working memory, inhibition, and planning. At the same time
that ToM abilities develop, executive functions also improve dramatically
(Zelazo, Muller, Frye, & Marcovitch, 2003). There are several ways in which
executive functions could be involved in ToM and the false-belief task (e.g.,
tracking the event sequence, inferring and holding in mind the agent’s false
belief, inhibiting one’s own perspective, and/or reality to respond on the
basis of the agent’s belief), and many studies have confirmed correlations
between children’s ToM and their performance on executive function tasks
(Carlson & Moses, 2001).
Language abilities are also intimately related to ToM development. Across
studies, significant relations between success on ToM tasks and performance
on language measures have been observed in typically developing children
and in clinical samples, including children with autism, specific language
impairment, and deafness (Milligan, Astington, & Dack, 2007). Language
likely factors into ToM by supplying a vocabulary of mental state terms, providing the grammatical structure used with mental state verbs (e.g., think
and know), and creating the opportunity for conversation—especially about
mental states (Astington & Baird, 2005).
Several theoretical accounts have been advanced to explain the development of ToM and its relation to language, executive functions, and
experience in the family. The theory–theory perspective claims that ToM
understandings are built gradually and progressively over development,

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as children’s naive theories about the mind are revised based on new experiences (Gopnik & Wellman, 1994). On this view, the protracted sequence
of ToM achievements, including the developmental shift between 3 and
5 years in false-belief understanding, reflects a process of intuitive theory
development and revision. Simulation theorists, in contrast, argue that we
understand others’ minds and actions directly by projecting ourselves into
the other’s situation, simulating what we would feel in that situation, and
attributing that experience to the other (Harris, 1992). On this view, developmental change in ToM results from improvements in children’s ability
to engage in simulation. Finally, according to the modularity account, ToM
reasoning is made possible by an innately specified module in the brain.
Change thus results from biological maturation that triggers ToM concepts
to “come online” and from the development of abilities independent of the
ToM module, including response–inhibition and other executive functions
(Leslie, Friedman, & German, 2004). Although there are clear tensions
between these accounts, most researchers accept that elements of each, as
well as increases in language and executive function, explain and shape the
course of ToM development.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Two emerging areas of cutting-edge research have challenged the foundational research and theoretical accounts of ToM development described
above.
FALSE BELIEF IN INFANCY
First, the classic pattern of ToM development supported by decades of
research has received renewed consideration in light of new evidence that
infants show understanding of false belief on some measures. For example,
Onishi and Baillargeon (2005) used a nonverbal violation-of-expectation
paradigm to examine 15-month-olds’ response to a series of events similar
to those in the classic false-belief task. In this study, an agent hides an object
in one of two locations and is absent while the object moves unexpectedly to
the other location. The agent then reaches into either the location where she
falsely believes the object to be or the object’s true location. Data show that
infants look longer when the agent acts in line with reality (i.e., reaches in the
object’s true location), when she ought to hold a false belief. Longer looking
is thought to reveal extended processing due to surprise or puzzlement.
Thus, these and analogous findings have been interpreted as indicating that
infants track mental representations of agents, expect them to act on false
beliefs, and are surprised when they do not.

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Similar results have been found in anticipatory-looking experiments that
use patterns of eye movements to measure whether participants make action
predictions based on agents’ false beliefs. Data show that children 18 months
and older make anticipatory gaze shifts, indicating their predictions about
the consequences of a false belief (i.e., expecting an agent to act on a location
that is sensible only if they recognize that the agent possesses a false belief;
Southgate, Senju, & Csibra, 2007).
Perhaps, the most compelling evidence of early-emerging false-belief competence comes from interactive paradigms in which infants (18–24 months)
interact with social partners in manners suggesting that they anticipate their
partners’ false beliefs. Knudsen and Liszkowski (2012) found that infants
spontaneously intervene to prevent people from acting on false beliefs (i.e.,
by pointing to the location of an object before their partner with a false belief
committed a mistake). These results suggest that infants were able to infer
that the partner held a false belief, predict how he would behave given that
false belief, and spontaneously help by preventing his mistake.
In sum, strong and converging recent evidence suggests that some ability
to reason about false beliefs—a skill traditionally thought to emerge at 4–5
years—is actually present in infancy. The questions of how to define these
infant ToM abilities, account for them theoretically, and reconcile them with
the protracted developmental trajectory described previously are key issues
for future research.
ToM AND THE BRAIN
Second, the ToM literature has been enriched recently through cutting-edge
investigations into the neural bases of ToM. There is now substantial
evidence that ToM reasoning in adults involves a network of core neural
regions including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), right and left
temporoparietal junction (TPJ), superior temporal sulcus (STS), temporal
poles (TPs), and precuneus (see Carrington & Bailey, 2009 for a review).
These regions are recruited in largely overlapping ways across various
paradigms and individual mental states (e.g., beliefs and desires). Moreover,
these regions have been found to show less activation in individuals on
the autism spectrum (Baron-Cohen et al., 1999). Although questions remain
about the functional contribution of each region and the extent to which
these neural substrates are specialized for ToM, existing data provide a
foundation for understanding how ToM reasoning is accomplished in the
brain.
Recently, researchers have also begun to examine the neural correlates of
ToM in children (see Bowman & Wellman, 2014 for a review). Existing studies

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suggest that children as young as 4 years activate similar neural regions during ToM reasoning as adults (Saxe, Whitfield-Gabrieli, Scholz, & Pelphrey,
2009). These data imply that there is developmental continuity in the
network of neural regions involved in ToM. Yet, research also supports the
hypothesis that neuromechanisms for ToM still develop during childhood
and that functional maturation of these brain regions occurs as ToM performance increases (Sabbagh, Bowman, Evraire, & Ito, 2009). In particular, areas
such as the TPJ appear to become increasingly recruited and specialized for
ToM reasoning across childhood at the same time that the role of the mPFC is
diminished. Developmental investigations into the neural correlates of ToM
are still in their infancy and raise many important questions. Nevertheless,
findings highlight the promise of neuroscientific research for shedding light
on fundamental questions related to the origins and mechanisms of ToM
development.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Many critical questions arise out of the foundational and cutting-edge
research on ToM. This essay examines three sets of issues for future research.
RECONCILING INFANT ToM WITH TRADITIONAL APPROACHES
First, the growing evidence of false-belief abilities in infants has required
researchers to rethink their traditional findings and theoretical accounts.
How might the evidence of early competence be reconciled with the
protracted sequence of developmental achievements observed in classic
research? Two general approaches have been proposed. One is to disregard
findings from one side or the other by arguing that the infant research
is not tapping real false-belief knowledge or that the conceptual changes
observed during childhood merely reflect the development of inhibition or
other aspects of executive functioning. Given the number of studies now
supporting infant false-belief abilities and the breadth of research illustrating
the real-world consequences and predictors of false-belief understanding in
preschoolers, however, the argument for dismissing part of the evidence is
tenuous.
A second approach is to accept both sets of findings as revealing something
important and intriguing about ToM. Specifically, these two sets of findings
may reflect different aspects of ToM: an implicit component that appears in
spontaneous-response tasks such as those used in infancy, and an explicit
component that shows up on elicited-response tasks such as the standard
false-belief test (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009). On this account, infants have

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some implicit knowledge of false beliefs and their role in determining behavior, but this knowledge is not fully accessible to conscious awareness. A fully
conscious, explicit ToM must still develop across early childhood through an
extended process of conceptual development.
This approach yields several key questions for the future. First, how should
implicit versus explicit ToM be defined? Common themes are that implicit
knowledge cannot be articulated and is not incorporated into deliberative
judgment; however, further research into the nature of these systems is necessary. Second, what are the implications of implicit versus explicit ToM for
social cognition and behavior? How do these different types of ToM vary
across individuals and what types of behavior do each support? Finally, what
is the relation between the implicit and explicit system across development?
Do these systems remain distinct or does early implicit knowledge feed into
the development of explicit ToM? Further research on these issues promises
to refine our theoretical accounts and expand understanding of the nature
and developmental trajectory of ToM.
NEUROSCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING OF ToM AND DEVELOPMENT
Existing neuroscientific investigations have identified the network of neural
regions involved in ToM reasoning in adults and have begun to shed light on
how those networks develop across the life span. However, much remains
unknown (Bowman & Wellman, 2014). First, little is known about the contribution of each region in the ToM network and the role of functional and structural connections between regions. Second, limited research has examined
whether reasoning about specific mental states (e.g., belief and desire) is associated with distinct patterns of neural activity. Given that behavioral studies
have shown unique developmental trajectories for different mental states,
research comparing the neural correlates of distinct mental states could be
particularly revealing. Pursuing these strategies will help to more comprehensively establish the brain basis of ToM.
To better understand ToM’s ontogeny, further neuroscientific research
is also necessary with participants from various ages (infancy through
adulthood) and examining diverse ToM concepts and tasks. Neuroscientific approaches have a number of unique advantages in addressing
developmental questions. First, they promise to shed light on the processes
underlying ToM abilities, early in development. In particular, neuroscientific
approaches may help to distinguish and explain the implicit and explicit
forms of ToM observed in behavioral studies. Second, these methods enable
researchers to compare adults and infants or children directly—a task
that is nearly impossible in behavioral research, given differences in the

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measures and responses available to infants versus adults. Third, neuroscientific approaches can reveal underlying differences or changes in ToM
processing that exist despite similarities in behavioral performance (e.g.,
when children and adults both pass standard false-belief tasks but recruit
neural regions differentially to do so). Finally, as neural correlates for typical
ToM development are identified, they can be compared to populations
exhibiting atypical development (e.g., deafness and autism). Ultimately,
further neurodevelopmental data will help us to better understand the
neural correlates of ToM as well as the extent to which and how they change
across development.
ToM USE AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Finally, since its inception, ToM research has been dominated by questions
regarding when and how ToM concepts are acquired in typical development.
Over the past three decades, researchers have gained considerable insight
into these issues. Nevertheless, we know remarkably little about the mature
ToM system, how it is used in everyday life, and how it differs across individuals (Apperly, 2011). For example, to what extent do adults rely on mental
state inferences as they engage in social interactions as opposed to consulting
other sources, such as social scripts? Although it is irrefutably the case that
adults can represent the mental states of themselves and others, it is also true
that some social interaction can occur without any ToM inferences; thus, it is
important to examine the manner and extent to which mature adults utilize
their ToM.
Moreover, everyday experience indicates that there is a range of ToM ability within the typical population. Some people consistently show insight into
mental states and adapt their behavior accordingly, whereas others show
considerably less awareness. Standard ToM tasks are of little use in measuring such differences, as they typically assess only the presence or absence of
ToM concepts (Apperly, 2011). Understanding individual differences in ToM
will require developing new ways to measure variance in people’s ability to
apply these concepts in a flexible, context-sensitive manner.
Questions of use and individual differences in ToM can also be considered developmentally. For example, Liszkowski (2013) has proposed that
researchers examining the development of ToM should shift away from
a model that focuses on mental state concepts to one that considers how
children build and use a ToM system through everyday social interaction.
Better tools for evaluating individual differences in children’s ToM may
also result in further understanding of both the social consequences and the
predictors of ToM. Although research has generally supported associations
between ToM and social behavior (Astington, 2003), more refined measures

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of individual differences in the ability to apply ToM concepts online may
provide clearer links to social competence. Likewise, more refined measures
may also shed light on developmental continuities in ToM (Wellman et al.,
2008) and facilitate new research on the factors in early experience (e.g., personality traits and family environment) that predict who goes on to develop
superior ToM.
In sum, decades of multidisciplinary research have resulted in an impressive understanding of how people come to understand their own and others’
minds. Exciting new findings on the origins of ToM in infancy and its neural
correlates across development now leave us poised for further productive
investigation. Pursuing these topics and expanding our models to include
the use and variability of ToM in everyday life promises to provide critical
new insight into ToM’s nature and development.
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Meta-analysis of the relation between language ability and false belief understanding. Child Development, 78, 622–646.
Moll, H., & Tomasello, M. (2004). 12- and 18-month-old infants follow gaze to spaces
behind barriers. Developmental Science, 7, F1–F9.
Moore, C., & Frye, D. (1991). The acquisition and utility of theories of mind. In D. Frye
& C. Moore (Eds.), Children’s theories of mind: Mental states and social understanding
(pp. 1–14). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Onishi, K. H., & Baillargeon, R. (2005). Do 15-month-old infants understand false
beliefs? Science, 308(5719), 255–258.
Perner, J., & Wimmer, H. (1985). “John thinks that Mary thinks that”: Attribution
of second-order beliefs by 5- to 10-year-old children. Journal of Experimental Child
Psychology, 39, 437–471.
Pillow, B. H. (1989). Early understanding of perception as a source of knowledge.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 47, 116–129.
Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1, 515–526.
Repacholi, B. M., & Gopnik, A. (1997). Early reasoning about desires: Evidence from
14- and 18-month-olds. Developmental Psychology, 33, 12–12.
Sabbagh, M. A., Bowman, L. C., Evraire, L. E., & Ito, J. M. B. (2009). Neurodevelopmental correlates of theory of mind in preschool children. Child development, 80,
1147–62.

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Saxe, R., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., Scholz, J., & Pelphrey, K. A. (2009). Brain regions
for perceiving and reasoning about other people in school-aged children. Child
Development, 80, 1197–1209.
Southgate, V., Senju, A., & Csibra, G. (2007). Action anticipation through attribution
of false belief by 2-year-olds. Psychological Science, 18(7), 587–592.
Tomasello, M., & Haberl, K. (2003). Understanding attention: 12- and 18-month-olds
know what is new for other persons. Developmental Psychology, 39, 906–912.
Wellman, H. M. (1990). The child’s theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wellman, H. M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind
development: The truth about false belief. Child Development, 72(3), 655–684.
Wellman, H. M., & Liu, D. (2004). Scaling of theory-of-mind tasks. Child Development,
75(2), 523–541.
Wellman, H. M., Lopez-Duran, S., LaBounty, J., & Hamilton, B. (2008). Infant attention to intentional action predicts preschool theory of mind. Developmental Psychology, 44(2), 618–623.
Wellman, H. M., & Woolley, J. D. (1990). From simple desires to ordinary beliefs: The
early development of everyday psychology. Cognition, 35, 245–275.
Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception.
Cognition, 13(1), 103–128.
Woodward, A. (1998). Infants selectively encode the goal object of an actor’s reach.
Cognition, 69, 1–34.
Zelazo, P. D., Muller, U., Frye, D., & Marcovitch, S. (2003). The development of executive function in early childhood. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child
Development, 68(3, Serial No. 27).

FURTHER READING
Apperly, I. A. (2011). Mindreaders: The cognitive basis of theory of mind. New York, NY:
Psychology Press.
Baillargeon, R., Scott, R. M., & He, Z. (2010). False-belief understanding in infants.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(3), 110–118.
Bowman, L. C., & Wellman, H. M. (2014). Neuroscience contributions to childhood
theory-of-mind development. In O. N. Saracho (Ed.), Contemporary perspectives on
research in theories of mind in early childhood education. Charlotte, NC: Information
Age Publishing.
Doherty, M. J. (2009). Theory of mind: How children understand others’ thoughts and feelings. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Wellman, H. M. (1990). The child’s theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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AMANDA C. BRANDONE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Amanda C. Brandone is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Lehigh University. Dr. Brandone earned her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2010 and her bachelor’s
degree in Psychology from Boston College. Her research has been published
in numerous journals including Child Development, Cognition, Cognitive Science, Developmental Science, and Psychological Science. Dr. Brandone’s work
focuses on early cognitive development and the processes by which infants
and young children gain understanding of the physical, biological, and social
world.
Personal webpage: http://psychology.cas2.lehigh.edu/content/acb210
Lab webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/childdevelopment
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16

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

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Theory of Mind and Behavior
AMANDA C. BRANDONE

Abstract
The capacity to understand and reason about the unobservable mental states (e.g.,
thoughts, desires, and beliefs) of oneself and others, known as theory of mind (ToM),
is central to human social cognition. Multidisciplinary interest in ToM stems from its
potentially unique human nature, the role it plays in our ability to engage in complex
social interactions, and its impairment in psychiatric and developmental disorders,
such as autism. Through more than 30 years of research, we have learned a great deal
about how and when children come to reason about others in terms of their mental
states. This essay reviews foundational research on the development of ToM reasoning during childhood; outlines cutting-edge findings on the infant origins and neural
correlates of ToM; and finally discusses key issues for future research, including reconciling infant competence with evidence of protracted conceptual development in
early childhood, expanding our neuroscientific understanding of ToM and its development, and shedding light on the use and individual variability of ToM in everyday
life. Pursuing these goals will address important theoretical questions and provide
critical new insight into the origins, development, neural basis, and social and behavioral consequences of ToM.

INTRODUCTION
Human cognition and experience are intensely social. We spend much of our
time interacting with social partners and thinking about their words, actions,
and thoughts. The ease with which we engage in these processes is owed in
part to our theory of mind.
Theory of mind (ToM; also referred to as folk psychology or mind reading) is
the capacity to infer and reason about unobservable mental states, such as
thoughts, desires, and beliefs, in oneself and others. This complex cognitive
phenomenon encompasses several interrelated components. First, one must
recognize the existence of mental states and their unique nature. Mental
states are unobservable, immaterial, subjective, and sometimes inconsistent
with reality. Second, one must understand how mental states come about,
relate to one another, and explain behavior. Consider the case of Romeo

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

whose belief that Juliet was dead (based on his perception of her lifeless body)
and desire not to live without her caused him to take his own life.
Questions regarding the evolution, development, biological basis, and
consequences of ToM have proven to be of interest in a range of fields including philosophy, primatology, and psychology (e.g., developmental, clinical,
neuroscience). Interest stems from several sources. First, ToM is an important
cognitive achievement underpinning our ability to engage in complex social
interactions (Moore & Frye, 1991): communication, cooperation, empathy,
social learning, and moral reasoning, all utilize ToM, as do less virtuous
goals like deception and lying. Second, deficits or impairments in ToM
have been implicated in psychiatric and developmental disorders including
schizophrenia and autism. The social and communication challenges faced
by people with autism provide a particularly salient demonstration of
cognition in the absence of ToM (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985). Third,
ToM plays prominently in models of what makes human cognition unique.
Although some aspects are thought to be shared with other species, the
special collection of ToM abilities in humans has been hypothesized to
underlie uniquely human social cognition and cultural intelligence (Call &
Tomasello, 2008). Finally, interest stems from the mystery of the basic
phenomenon of ToM: How is it possible to know the minds of others when
we never have direct access to the thoughts, desires, and beliefs that they
contain?
This essay reviews key findings and emerging trends from over three
decades of multidisciplinary research on how people come to understand
their own and others’ minds.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
THE CLASSIC APPROACH: REASONING ABOUT FALSE BELIEF
In 1978, Premack and Woodruff launched the field of ToM with the paper
“Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?” In a commentary on that
initial paper, Dennett (1978) proposed what is now considered the gold
standard measure of ToM. Dennett argued that it is impossible to determine
whether an individual (chimpanzee or human) is imputing the mental
state of another in situations in which the other’s mental state is consistent
with reality or shared with the individual. A true test of ToM requires that
the individual act on a mental state that conflicts with his or her own. In
particular, Dennett proposed that studies should examine situations in
which a subject has to make judgments about an agent who sees, knows,
wants, or believes something different from himself. This proposal inspired

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the now classic task used to examine ToM in children (Wimmer & Perner,
1983).
Consider this scenario. A boy named Maxi has a piece of chocolate. He puts
it in the cupboard and goes outside. While he is outside, his mother finds the
chocolate and moves it to the drawer. Maxi returns and wants his chocolate.
Where will Maxi look for his chocolate? The answer may seem obvious, but
note the false belief in this situation: Maxi believes falsely that his chocolate is
in the cupboard. To respond correctly, one must recognize that Maxi’s mental state is inconsistent with one’s own and with reality. Another commonly
used procedure examines false beliefs about the contents of a container. For
example, participants see a crayon box that they learn is filled with candles.
They are then asked what someone who has never seen inside will think the
box holds. To answer correctly, one must set aside knowledge of reality to
attribute a false belief to the other person.
Studies using these and related tasks have provided a consistent pattern
of results (see Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001 for a review). Children 4–5
years and older typically pass standard false-belief tasks by acknowledging
the other person’s false belief (e.g., Maxi will look incorrectly in the cupboard;
the person will erroneously think the box holds crayons). Younger children,
however, typically fail these tasks: they report that the character’s actions
and beliefs will correspond to reality (e.g., Maxi will look in the drawer; the
person will think the box holds candles) failing to recognize the representational nature of beliefs. Recent meta-analyses have revealed that methodological variations to the task can make it slightly harder or easier, and that
testing children who differ in cultural–linguistic community will produce
slightly different ages of transition. Nevertheless, the basic findings remain
the same: Children move from below-chance to above-chance performance
during the preschool years (Wellman et al., 2001). These findings suggest that
ToM undergoes a major change during early childhood (Wellman, 1990). The
claim is that not until roughly age 5 do children “understand that people live
their lives in a mental world as much as in a world of real situations and
occurrences” (Wellman et al., 2001, p. 656).
REAL-WORLD CONSEQUENCES OF FALSE BELIEF
An initial question that arises from the studies of false-belief understanding
is whether the false-belief task is a meaningful measure of ToM. One way to
approach this question is to examine whether false-belief performance has
any measurable social consequences. Given that ToM serves as the foundation for our ability to engage in complex social interactions, performance

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

on false-belief tasks should correspond to real-world differences in behavior. Research confirms this: Differences in false-belief understanding during preschool independently predict several aspects of social development
including communicative competence, social competence, and peer interactions (see Astington, 2003 for a review). The link between false-belief performance and social behavior can also be observed in the case of autism.
Children with autism perform significantly less well on false-belief tasks than
control children with similar levels of intellectual disability, and show specific, disproportionate social and communicative deficits (Baron-Cohen et al.,
1985). Finally, the ecological validity of false-belief tasks is highlighted by the
fact that when children pass these tests, they also demonstrate other evidence
of ToM knowledge, including talking about what people think, know, and
want, appreciating the immaterial nature of mental entities, and engaging in
deception and lying to manipulate others’ mental states (see Wellman, 1990
for a review). Together, these findings confirm the utility of the false-belief
task and the real-life consequences of ToM.
ToM BEFORE FALSE BELIEF
Another key question raised by the developmental change in false-belief
performance concerns the state of ToM knowledge before success on the
false-belief task. It is not the case that younger children have no understanding of mental states and that passing the false-belief test marks the onset of
ToM. In contrast, an extensive literature suggests that children experience a
sequence of conceptual insights along the path to mature ToM.
Consider first the case of understanding visual experience. Seeing is relevant to ToM because visual experience influences what we think and know,
and visual perspective taking represents one form of ToM reasoning. By 2–3
years, children recognize that people with different lines of sight might see
different things (Masangkay et al., 1974), and even toddlers show evidence of
attributing visual experience to others by following an adult’s gaze around a
barrier to verify that they are seeing the same thing (Moll & Tomasello, 2004).
Before success on the false-belief task, children also show understanding
of knowledge and its relation to experience. By 3 years, children know that
perceptual experience determines what objects and events a person knows
about (Pillow, 1989), and even toddlers understand something about others’
knowledge states in the sense of knowing which objects others have and have
not experienced (Tomasello & Haberl, 2003).
A large literature suggests that young children also show sensitivity to the
desires, goals, and intentions of others. Two-year-olds understand that when
people want something, they behave in a manner consistent with the fulfillment of that desire (e.g., if Sam wants his rabbit, he will search for it) and

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experience emotions related to that desire (e.g., Sam will be sad if he cannot
find it; Wellman & Woolley, 1990). Toddlers also show some understanding
of desires and their subjective nature (Repacholi & Gopnik, 1997).
The earliest evidence of ToM reasoning in children, however, comes from
studies examining infants’ understanding of the intentional, goal-directed
nature of human action. During the first year, infants interpret human
action by considering more than just its surface-behavioral properties. Early
in the first year, infants appreciate that reaching actions are goal-directed
(i.e., directed toward particular objects, not locations in space; Woodward,
1998). Later in the first year, infants also appreciate the intentional nature of
human actions (i.e., that actions are motivated by internal causes; Brandone
& Wellman, 2009). Importantly, longitudinal studies show that individual
differences in attention to intentional action in infancy predict preschool
ToM as measured by the false-belief task (Wellman, Lopez-Duran, LaBounty,
& Hamilton, 2008). These findings suggest that intention understanding in
infancy is in fact a developmental precursor of a later, more mature ToM.
In sum, evidence confirms that although success on the standard false-belief
task is not achieved until roughly 4–5 years, the origins of ToM lie in infancy:
Children proceed through a standard sequence of conceptual achievements
along the path to false-belief understanding (Wellman & Liu, 2004)—moving
from an initial understanding of the intentional nature of action to increasingly rich concepts of desire, knowledge, and belief.
ToM AFTER FALSE BELIEF
Just as success on the false-belief task does not represent the onset of ToM,
false-belief performance also does not represent ToM’s culmination (see
Miller, 2012 for a review). Mastery of second-order false belief—the capacity
to understand what one person believes (usually falsely) about another
person’s beliefs (e.g., I think that he thinks that there are crayons in the box;
Perner & Wimmer, 1985)—occurs consistently later than the standard task
at roughly 5–7 years. Beyond preschool, children also experience changes in
their concepts of the nature and diversity of thought. Near age 7, children
recognize that thought is characterized by a constant flow of ideas and
that people are almost always thinking. At roughly the same age, children
begin to demonstrate an understanding of interpretive diversity—or “an
appreciation that one and the same thing can be assigned different meanings
by different persons”—as in the case of the Rorschach inkblots or other
ambiguous stimuli (Carpendale & Chandler, 1996, p. 1703). These achievements provide evidence of a broader understanding that the mind does
not just passively receive information, but rather is active and constructive.
Further evidence of the development of advanced ToM abilities can be seen

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

in improvements with age in reasoning about complex linguistic devices
such as sarcasm and irony, interpreting social faux pas, reasoning about
ambiguous social scenarios, and applying an awareness of the mind toward
accomplishing cognitive tasks. Thus, although ToM research has been
concentrated in early childhood, it is clear that understanding ToM and its
application in social situations develops throughout childhood and into
adulthood.
EXPLAINING ToM DEVELOPMENT
There are at least two classes of variables that explain individual differences
in ToM. The first includes family variables. ToM development is enhanced
when the family environment draws attention to the fact that mental states
exist and can vary across individuals. For example, conversations with parents about mental states, mothers’ tendency to focus on their children’s own
mental states, and children’s experience with siblings influence how quickly
children meet ToM milestones (Dunn & Brophy, 2005).
Second, ToM is also related to two key cognitive constructs: executive
functions and language. Executive functions are the cognitive processes
involved in working memory, inhibition, and planning. At the same time
that ToM abilities develop, executive functions also improve dramatically
(Zelazo, Muller, Frye, & Marcovitch, 2003). There are several ways in which
executive functions could be involved in ToM and the false-belief task (e.g.,
tracking the event sequence, inferring and holding in mind the agent’s false
belief, inhibiting one’s own perspective, and/or reality to respond on the
basis of the agent’s belief), and many studies have confirmed correlations
between children’s ToM and their performance on executive function tasks
(Carlson & Moses, 2001).
Language abilities are also intimately related to ToM development. Across
studies, significant relations between success on ToM tasks and performance
on language measures have been observed in typically developing children
and in clinical samples, including children with autism, specific language
impairment, and deafness (Milligan, Astington, & Dack, 2007). Language
likely factors into ToM by supplying a vocabulary of mental state terms, providing the grammatical structure used with mental state verbs (e.g., think
and know), and creating the opportunity for conversation—especially about
mental states (Astington & Baird, 2005).
Several theoretical accounts have been advanced to explain the development of ToM and its relation to language, executive functions, and
experience in the family. The theory–theory perspective claims that ToM
understandings are built gradually and progressively over development,

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7

as children’s naive theories about the mind are revised based on new experiences (Gopnik & Wellman, 1994). On this view, the protracted sequence
of ToM achievements, including the developmental shift between 3 and
5 years in false-belief understanding, reflects a process of intuitive theory
development and revision. Simulation theorists, in contrast, argue that we
understand others’ minds and actions directly by projecting ourselves into
the other’s situation, simulating what we would feel in that situation, and
attributing that experience to the other (Harris, 1992). On this view, developmental change in ToM results from improvements in children’s ability
to engage in simulation. Finally, according to the modularity account, ToM
reasoning is made possible by an innately specified module in the brain.
Change thus results from biological maturation that triggers ToM concepts
to “come online” and from the development of abilities independent of the
ToM module, including response–inhibition and other executive functions
(Leslie, Friedman, & German, 2004). Although there are clear tensions
between these accounts, most researchers accept that elements of each, as
well as increases in language and executive function, explain and shape the
course of ToM development.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Two emerging areas of cutting-edge research have challenged the foundational research and theoretical accounts of ToM development described
above.
FALSE BELIEF IN INFANCY
First, the classic pattern of ToM development supported by decades of
research has received renewed consideration in light of new evidence that
infants show understanding of false belief on some measures. For example,
Onishi and Baillargeon (2005) used a nonverbal violation-of-expectation
paradigm to examine 15-month-olds’ response to a series of events similar
to those in the classic false-belief task. In this study, an agent hides an object
in one of two locations and is absent while the object moves unexpectedly to
the other location. The agent then reaches into either the location where she
falsely believes the object to be or the object’s true location. Data show that
infants look longer when the agent acts in line with reality (i.e., reaches in the
object’s true location), when she ought to hold a false belief. Longer looking
is thought to reveal extended processing due to surprise or puzzlement.
Thus, these and analogous findings have been interpreted as indicating that
infants track mental representations of agents, expect them to act on false
beliefs, and are surprised when they do not.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Similar results have been found in anticipatory-looking experiments that
use patterns of eye movements to measure whether participants make action
predictions based on agents’ false beliefs. Data show that children 18 months
and older make anticipatory gaze shifts, indicating their predictions about
the consequences of a false belief (i.e., expecting an agent to act on a location
that is sensible only if they recognize that the agent possesses a false belief;
Southgate, Senju, & Csibra, 2007).
Perhaps, the most compelling evidence of early-emerging false-belief competence comes from interactive paradigms in which infants (18–24 months)
interact with social partners in manners suggesting that they anticipate their
partners’ false beliefs. Knudsen and Liszkowski (2012) found that infants
spontaneously intervene to prevent people from acting on false beliefs (i.e.,
by pointing to the location of an object before their partner with a false belief
committed a mistake). These results suggest that infants were able to infer
that the partner held a false belief, predict how he would behave given that
false belief, and spontaneously help by preventing his mistake.
In sum, strong and converging recent evidence suggests that some ability
to reason about false beliefs—a skill traditionally thought to emerge at 4–5
years—is actually present in infancy. The questions of how to define these
infant ToM abilities, account for them theoretically, and reconcile them with
the protracted developmental trajectory described previously are key issues
for future research.
ToM AND THE BRAIN
Second, the ToM literature has been enriched recently through cutting-edge
investigations into the neural bases of ToM. There is now substantial
evidence that ToM reasoning in adults involves a network of core neural
regions including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), right and left
temporoparietal junction (TPJ), superior temporal sulcus (STS), temporal
poles (TPs), and precuneus (see Carrington & Bailey, 2009 for a review).
These regions are recruited in largely overlapping ways across various
paradigms and individual mental states (e.g., beliefs and desires). Moreover,
these regions have been found to show less activation in individuals on
the autism spectrum (Baron-Cohen et al., 1999). Although questions remain
about the functional contribution of each region and the extent to which
these neural substrates are specialized for ToM, existing data provide a
foundation for understanding how ToM reasoning is accomplished in the
brain.
Recently, researchers have also begun to examine the neural correlates of
ToM in children (see Bowman & Wellman, 2014 for a review). Existing studies

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suggest that children as young as 4 years activate similar neural regions during ToM reasoning as adults (Saxe, Whitfield-Gabrieli, Scholz, & Pelphrey,
2009). These data imply that there is developmental continuity in the
network of neural regions involved in ToM. Yet, research also supports the
hypothesis that neuromechanisms for ToM still develop during childhood
and that functional maturation of these brain regions occurs as ToM performance increases (Sabbagh, Bowman, Evraire, & Ito, 2009). In particular, areas
such as the TPJ appear to become increasingly recruited and specialized for
ToM reasoning across childhood at the same time that the role of the mPFC is
diminished. Developmental investigations into the neural correlates of ToM
are still in their infancy and raise many important questions. Nevertheless,
findings highlight the promise of neuroscientific research for shedding light
on fundamental questions related to the origins and mechanisms of ToM
development.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Many critical questions arise out of the foundational and cutting-edge
research on ToM. This essay examines three sets of issues for future research.
RECONCILING INFANT ToM WITH TRADITIONAL APPROACHES
First, the growing evidence of false-belief abilities in infants has required
researchers to rethink their traditional findings and theoretical accounts.
How might the evidence of early competence be reconciled with the
protracted sequence of developmental achievements observed in classic
research? Two general approaches have been proposed. One is to disregard
findings from one side or the other by arguing that the infant research
is not tapping real false-belief knowledge or that the conceptual changes
observed during childhood merely reflect the development of inhibition or
other aspects of executive functioning. Given the number of studies now
supporting infant false-belief abilities and the breadth of research illustrating
the real-world consequences and predictors of false-belief understanding in
preschoolers, however, the argument for dismissing part of the evidence is
tenuous.
A second approach is to accept both sets of findings as revealing something
important and intriguing about ToM. Specifically, these two sets of findings
may reflect different aspects of ToM: an implicit component that appears in
spontaneous-response tasks such as those used in infancy, and an explicit
component that shows up on elicited-response tasks such as the standard
false-belief test (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009). On this account, infants have

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

some implicit knowledge of false beliefs and their role in determining behavior, but this knowledge is not fully accessible to conscious awareness. A fully
conscious, explicit ToM must still develop across early childhood through an
extended process of conceptual development.
This approach yields several key questions for the future. First, how should
implicit versus explicit ToM be defined? Common themes are that implicit
knowledge cannot be articulated and is not incorporated into deliberative
judgment; however, further research into the nature of these systems is necessary. Second, what are the implications of implicit versus explicit ToM for
social cognition and behavior? How do these different types of ToM vary
across individuals and what types of behavior do each support? Finally, what
is the relation between the implicit and explicit system across development?
Do these systems remain distinct or does early implicit knowledge feed into
the development of explicit ToM? Further research on these issues promises
to refine our theoretical accounts and expand understanding of the nature
and developmental trajectory of ToM.
NEUROSCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING OF ToM AND DEVELOPMENT
Existing neuroscientific investigations have identified the network of neural
regions involved in ToM reasoning in adults and have begun to shed light on
how those networks develop across the life span. However, much remains
unknown (Bowman & Wellman, 2014). First, little is known about the contribution of each region in the ToM network and the role of functional and structural connections between regions. Second, limited research has examined
whether reasoning about specific mental states (e.g., belief and desire) is associated with distinct patterns of neural activity. Given that behavioral studies
have shown unique developmental trajectories for different mental states,
research comparing the neural correlates of distinct mental states could be
particularly revealing. Pursuing these strategies will help to more comprehensively establish the brain basis of ToM.
To better understand ToM’s ontogeny, further neuroscientific research
is also necessary with participants from various ages (infancy through
adulthood) and examining diverse ToM concepts and tasks. Neuroscientific approaches have a number of unique advantages in addressing
developmental questions. First, they promise to shed light on the processes
underlying ToM abilities, early in development. In particular, neuroscientific
approaches may help to distinguish and explain the implicit and explicit
forms of ToM observed in behavioral studies. Second, these methods enable
researchers to compare adults and infants or children directly—a task
that is nearly impossible in behavioral research, given differences in the

Theory of Mind and Behavior

11

measures and responses available to infants versus adults. Third, neuroscientific approaches can reveal underlying differences or changes in ToM
processing that exist despite similarities in behavioral performance (e.g.,
when children and adults both pass standard false-belief tasks but recruit
neural regions differentially to do so). Finally, as neural correlates for typical
ToM development are identified, they can be compared to populations
exhibiting atypical development (e.g., deafness and autism). Ultimately,
further neurodevelopmental data will help us to better understand the
neural correlates of ToM as well as the extent to which and how they change
across development.
ToM USE AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Finally, since its inception, ToM research has been dominated by questions
regarding when and how ToM concepts are acquired in typical development.
Over the past three decades, researchers have gained considerable insight
into these issues. Nevertheless, we know remarkably little about the mature
ToM system, how it is used in everyday life, and how it differs across individuals (Apperly, 2011). For example, to what extent do adults rely on mental
state inferences as they engage in social interactions as opposed to consulting
other sources, such as social scripts? Although it is irrefutably the case that
adults can represent the mental states of themselves and others, it is also true
that some social interaction can occur without any ToM inferences; thus, it is
important to examine the manner and extent to which mature adults utilize
their ToM.
Moreover, everyday experience indicates that there is a range of ToM ability within the typical population. Some people consistently show insight into
mental states and adapt their behavior accordingly, whereas others show
considerably less awareness. Standard ToM tasks are of little use in measuring such differences, as they typically assess only the presence or absence of
ToM concepts (Apperly, 2011). Understanding individual differences in ToM
will require developing new ways to measure variance in people’s ability to
apply these concepts in a flexible, context-sensitive manner.
Questions of use and individual differences in ToM can also be considered developmentally. For example, Liszkowski (2013) has proposed that
researchers examining the development of ToM should shift away from
a model that focuses on mental state concepts to one that considers how
children build and use a ToM system through everyday social interaction.
Better tools for evaluating individual differences in children’s ToM may
also result in further understanding of both the social consequences and the
predictors of ToM. Although research has generally supported associations
between ToM and social behavior (Astington, 2003), more refined measures

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

of individual differences in the ability to apply ToM concepts online may
provide clearer links to social competence. Likewise, more refined measures
may also shed light on developmental continuities in ToM (Wellman et al.,
2008) and facilitate new research on the factors in early experience (e.g., personality traits and family environment) that predict who goes on to develop
superior ToM.
In sum, decades of multidisciplinary research have resulted in an impressive understanding of how people come to understand their own and others’
minds. Exciting new findings on the origins of ToM in infancy and its neural
correlates across development now leave us poised for further productive
investigation. Pursuing these topics and expanding our models to include
the use and variability of ToM in everyday life promises to provide critical
new insight into ToM’s nature and development.
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Carrington, S. J., & Bailey, A. J. (2009). Are there theory of mind regions in the brain?
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FURTHER READING
Apperly, I. A. (2011). Mindreaders: The cognitive basis of theory of mind. New York, NY:
Psychology Press.
Baillargeon, R., Scott, R. M., & He, Z. (2010). False-belief understanding in infants.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(3), 110–118.
Bowman, L. C., & Wellman, H. M. (2014). Neuroscience contributions to childhood
theory-of-mind development. In O. N. Saracho (Ed.), Contemporary perspectives on
research in theories of mind in early childhood education. Charlotte, NC: Information
Age Publishing.
Doherty, M. J. (2009). Theory of mind: How children understand others’ thoughts and feelings. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Wellman, H. M. (1990). The child’s theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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AMANDA C. BRANDONE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Amanda C. Brandone is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Lehigh University. Dr. Brandone earned her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2010 and her bachelor’s
degree in Psychology from Boston College. Her research has been published
in numerous journals including Child Development, Cognition, Cognitive Science, Developmental Science, and Psychological Science. Dr. Brandone’s work
focuses on early cognitive development and the processes by which infants
and young children gain understanding of the physical, biological, and social
world.
Personal webpage: http://psychology.cas2.lehigh.edu/content/acb210
Lab webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/childdevelopment
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