{From Samuel Saunders (2003.05.31.1300:03 MDT)]
In _Science_ last week, there was an overview article on theory of mind.
The notion comes originally from Dave Premak and colleagues form their work
on cognition in apes. It has become a hot area in developmental psychology,
where it has been impicated as a critical element in language leaning, and
failure to demonstrate it as the primary deficit in autism. The theory of
mind is the ability to infer that the actions of others are purposive, and
thus the actions of living creatures are different from those of physical
objects. Consequent to this basic realization, there is an elaboration of
means for infering purpose from observation of the actions of others. These
skills are assumed to be important for language learning, for example,
because the ability to infer that speakers have purpose, and to focus on
aspects of the environment likely realted to that purpose, simplifies the
task and helps to overcome the "poverty of the stimulus".
In the science piece, there was some speculation that self awareness and
theory of mind may be closely related, sharing some of the same underlying
processes. It was further speculated that theory of mind may be the earlier
and more primitive of the two, in evolutionary terms. This speculation
rests in part on the "obvious" evolutionary advantage of theory of mind in
increased ability to deal with both social situations and the actions of
preditors and prey, in contrast to the less clear advantages bestowed by
self awareness.
Since the introduction of the concept, the notion that theory of mind is
shared among the great apes has done poorly, with substatial work by
Tomasello particularly suggesting that while some preliminaries may be
present in chimps and gorillas, the full blown ability appeard to be
uniquely human.
The two following paragraphs take this idea in two directions,
differentiated by the willingness to attribute theory of mind to presence of
specific brain structures.
If theory of mind and self awareness are intimately connected, two places to
look for hints about the observer would seem to be autistics and apes, both
of whom likely have much the same behavioral hierarchy as we, but perhaps
lack the "observer". This would suggest that the "observer" may be a function
of some uniquley human brain structure. The emergence of theory of mind at
2-3 years would suggest maturation of the critical structure(s) at about
that time.
On the other hand, given that most but not all humans develop theory of mind
at arround 2-3, perhaps we are seeing the random element of reorganization
of the hierarchy at work. Perhaps the nature of growing up human sets up a
problem at arround the critical age which can be solved by building theory
of mind conrol structures, but can also be solved (i.e. intrinsic error
reduced) in at least one other way that doesn't produce theory of mind
control structures, but some other arrangement. From then on we have
significantly different hierarchies, whose likely solutions to future
problems are very different. In this case, why no theory of mind in apes ?
Two answers seem possible. One is that the critical experiment may not have
been done; apes show some of the abilities (for example deception) that are
supposed to be supported by theory of mind, but not in ways that
unambiguously eliminate other explanations. On the other hand, maybe gowing
up chimpanzee biases toward the alternative sorts of control systems
suggested above; then apes with theory of mind may be as statistically rare
as humans with autism, and so far the right ape has not been found.
Samuel
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--
Samuel Spence Saunders, Ph.D. | If man chooses oblivion, he can go right
saunders@gwtc.net | on leaving his fate to political leaders.
ssaunders@olc.edu | If he chooses Utopia, he must initiate an
> enormous educational campaign-immediately
> R. Buckminster Fuller