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Advanced Theory of Mind
Advanced Theory
of Mind
SCOT T A. MILLER
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197573174.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Marquis, Canada
To Sylvia, Brielle, Tavia, and Ronan
Contents
Preface xi
1. Introduction 1
irst-Order Theory of Mind
F 2
Advanced Theory of Mind 6
What Do We Want to Know? 9
Organization of the Book 12
2. Understanding of Cognitive States 18
Second-Order False Belief 18
evelopmental Findings
D 19
More About Assessment 21
Pointing Ahead 23
Higher-Order Recursion 23
Strange Stories 27
Nonliteral Utterances 31
Lying 32
Irony and Sarcasm 34
Opacity 36
Diversity 39
Culture 42
Developmental Origins 44
Language and Executive Function 45
Social Experience 48
3. Understanding of Affective States 53
Emotion Understanding 53
Early Forms 54
est of Emotion Comprehension (TEC)
T 56
Hidden Emotions 59
Mixed Emotions 61
Belief 63
Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test 66
Faux Pas 69
Socially Ambiguous Stories 71
Other Measures 73
viii Contents
Gender 73
Culture 76
Developmental Origins 79
Language and Executive Function 79
S ocial Experience 81
Genetics 84
Comparisons Among Developments 85
4. Other Approaches 91
Mental Actions 91
ccurrence of Actions
O 92
Organization of Actions 96
Target for Judgment 99
amiliarity of Target: General
F 101
Familiarity of Target: Specific 108
Self as Target 113
Extraordinary Minds 118
Mind and Brain 123
5. Variations of First-Order Paradigms 127
Complications 127
alse Belief
F 128
Perspective Taking 138
Simplifications 141
erspective Taking
P 141
False Belief 143
Neuroimaging 152
Methods 152
Issues 154
Findings 155
6. Consequences: Cognitive Development 160
First-Order Findings 161
Contrasts Between First-Order and Advanced Theory of Mind 163
Academic Ability 164
Reading 164
Writing 169
Science and Epistemology 170
Teaching 174
Language Use 178
7. Consequences: Social Development 185
Peer Relations 186
S ocial Standing 186
Friendship 189
Contents ix
rosocial Behavior
P 191
Moral Reasoning and Moral Emotions 193
Reasoning 193
Emotions 199
Cooperation 201
Persuasion 203
Aggression 206
ullying
B 206
Aggression in General 208
Machiavellianism 210
Coda 211
8. Aging 213
ognitive Abilities and Aging
C 214
Theory of Mind and Aging 216
ethodological Issues
M 216
Age and Task Comparisons 218
Determinants: Aspects of the Task 225
Determinants: Aspects of the Person 229
Consequences 234
Alzheimer’s Disease 237
Neuroimaging 239
9. Clinical Conditions 243
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) 244
I nitial Studies 245
Determinants of Performance 247
Consequences 254
Evaluation 255
Deafness 257
Specific Language Impairment (SLI) 261
Depression 263
Schizophrenia 267
Neuroimaging 270
utism Spectrum Disorder
A 270
Schizophrenia 273
10. Conclusions 275
hat Develops and When Does It Develop?
W 275
Individual Differences 277
Group Differences 278
Sources of Development 280
Relations Among Developments 282
Theories 285
x Contents
References 295
Author Index 359
Subject Index 381
Preface
As the title indicates, this book deals with advanced theory of mind, that is,
forms of mentalistic understanding that emerge beyond the first 5 or 6 years
of life. It is one of three book-length treatments of this topic.
The first was an earlier book of mine entitled Theory of Mind: Development
Beyond the Preschool Years (Miller, 2012). The present book is not simply a
new edition of this earlier work. To be sure, it does what new editions al-
ways do: namely, update the coverage in light of more recent research—in
the present case, several hundred studies from the last 9 or 10 years. But it
also differs from the earlier book in its organization and emphases. In partic-
ular, several topics that received a few pages in the first book receive chapter-
length treatments in the present one. The result, I believe, is a book that
complements rather than duplicates its predecessor.
The other entry under the book-length heading is a book entitled Theory
of Mind in Middle Childhood and Adolescence, edited by Devine and Lecce.
This is a fine book, with well-chosen topics for its 11 chapters and leading
researchers to write about each topic. As is often the case with edited books,
however, some topics fall between the cracks; the present book provides a
fuller coverage of a number of issues. My book also provides a lifespan treat-
ment rather than up to adolescence only, and it provides a more up-to-date
treatment. My recommendation is that anyone interested in advanced theory
of mind draw from both sources.
I am grateful to many people for various kinds of help during the writing of
this book. The book benefitted greatly from the excellent reviewers solicited
by Oxford University Press: Daniel Bernstein, Michelle de Haan, Kristin
H. Lagattuta, Louis Moses, and Claudie Peloquin. I am also grateful to Dea
Garic for her comments on the neuroimaging material and to Bill Fabricius
for his sharing of a prepublication version of his research. As with my earlier
books, I received much needed help from the Interlibrary Loan Division of
the University of Florida Library, which tracked down so many sources that
I needed. Finally, I am grateful for the excellent help and support provided
by the editorial team at Oxford University: Abby Gross, Katie Pratt, Jennifer
Rod, and Hannah Cherry.
1
Introduction
Books or articles about theory of mind often begin with an example that
helps to convey what is meant by the term (e.g., Derksen, Hunsche, Giroux,
Connolly, & Bernstein, 2018; Miller, 2012; Wellman, 2014). This book will be
no exception.
The example I use is drawn from one of the Peanuts Sunday comic strips
in which Lucy is holding the football and Charlie Brown is about to run up to
kick it. The question is, what does each of the characters believe that the other
is thinking?
Lucy believes several things. She believes that Charlie thinks that she will
hold the ball in place and that he will finally be able to make his long-desired
kick. She believes this despite the fact that she knows that such a belief on
Charlie’s part is false, because she intends, as always, to pull the ball away at
the last minute. She believes as well that Charlie will act on what he believes
is true and not on what in fact is true—that is why he will end up kicking at
empty air. Finally, she believes that false beliefs such as Charlie’s do not al-
ways simply happen; rather, they can be deliberately implanted by another.
She, in fact, has just done so.
As Figure 1.1 shows, Charlie Brown’s thoughts may take a complicated
form. He has, of course, been fooled before, and so a natural first thought
is that Lucy intends to trick him again. If he stopped here (she thinks that
I think she will hold the football, but I really think that she will pull it away),
he would be fine. But being Charlie Brown, he overcomplicates things, and
the final entry in his chain of reasoning has the ball in place. And so he is
fooled again.
The beliefs of the two protagonists are not the only mental states in play
here. Lucy also takes into account Charlie’s desire to kick the football, be-
cause without the desire no attempted kick would be made. In general, nei-
ther beliefs nor desires alone are sufficient to impel behavior; they must work
together. Had the strip carried the story a bit further, Charlie’s emotion in
response to the outcome would have become apparent. In the typical case,
Advanced Theory of Mind. Scott A. Miller, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197573174.003.0001
2 Advanced Theory of Mind
The Peanuts example shows both Charlie and Lucy exercising their theory-
of-mind abilities (although Lucy more successfully than Charlie). Theory of
mind has to do with what people understand about the mental world. As
the example shows, theory of mind encompasses mental states of a variety of
sorts (e.g., beliefs, desires, emotions). It also encompasses both the self and
others as targets for judgment.
The mental states that figure most prominently in the football scenario are
beliefs, and it is beliefs that have been the most often studied mental state
in the research literature. The first theory-of-mind study had to do with
beliefs—specifically, with the realization that beliefs can sometimes be false
Introduction 3
(Wimmer & Perner, 1983). The child participants in the study heard a story
about a little boy named Maxi and his mother. When the story opens, the
mother has just returned from the store with some chocolate, which Maxi
helps her put away in the blue cupboard. Maxi then goes out to play, his
mother breaks off some of the chocolate for a cake she is making, and she
puts the rest back in the green cupboard. Maxi returns, and the question
asked of the child is where Maxi will look for the chocolate.
As the Peanuts example suggested, answering this question cor-
rectly requires several realizations. The child must realize that beliefs are
mental representations rather than direct reflections of reality and that as
representations they may sometimes be false. The child must also realize
that people’s actions follow from what they believe and not directly from the
world itself. Maxi, therefore, should look where his experience has led him to
believe that the chocolate is: in the blue cupboard.
It turned out that most 3-or 4-year-olds were incapable of such reasoning.
The dominant answer was that Maxi would search where the chocolate actu-
ally was—thus a response in terms of reality, and the child’s own knowledge,
and not in terms of Maxi’s belief. There have been hundreds of false belief
studies since, spanning diverse samples and diverse methods of testing, and
they confirm the results of this initial investigation: Children younger than
4 seldom succeed on standard measures of false belief (Wellman, Cross, &
Watson, 2001). Note that such children are not simply random in their re-
sponse; rather they are systematically wrong.
A further finding is that young children find it just as difficult to recapture
their own initial false belief as they do to judge the false belief of someone
else. In another often-used testing procedure, children first see a familiar
container such as a crayon box and are asked what it contains. After the child
gives the expected response of “crayons,” the box is opened to reveal that the
actual contents are candles. The box is then closed up, and the child is asked
what he or she thought was in the box before it was opened. Despite the fact
that they have just said “crayons,” most 3-year-olds and many 4-year-olds re-
spond “candles.” Whether the target is self or other, young children have dif-
ficulty in realizing that a belief need not match reality.
Young children’s difficulties in linking experience and belief are not lim-
ited to cases of false belief. In some instances experience is sufficient to instill
a true belief (thus knowledge), in some instances it is too insufficient to instill
any belief (thus ignorance), and in some instances it is compatible with two
or more beliefs (thus ambiguity). Children as young as 3 sometimes succeed
4 Advanced Theory of Mind
that different people may have different desires, even though they do not yet
realize that different people may have different beliefs (Repacholi & Gopnik,
1997). Still, such knowledge has to develop, for the developmentally earliest
response is to assume a desire identical to one’s one. Similarly, only some
forms of emotion understanding are evident during the preschool years.
Cases in which there is a mismatch between emotion and available cues
(e.g., facial expression) are especially challenging. Thus a full understanding
of mixed emotions or display rules is typically years away (Flavell, Miller, &
Miller, 2002).
The preceding is only a sampling of the challenges that face young chil-
dren in the domain of theory of mind. If the research picture ended at this
point, the general conclusion would mirror one of the conclusions from the
Piagetian studies that dominated the field of cognitive development prior to
the emergence of theory of mind. The conclusion would be that preschool
thought is riddled with gaps and confusions and basic misunderstandings
about how the world works. It is not until the grade-school years that chil-
dren begin to develop adult-like forms of thought.
Fortunately, the theory-of-mind research picture does not end at this
point. The first 5 years of life are not only a time during which many basic
understandings are initially lacking; they are also the time during which
most of these early problems are overcome. By age 5 typically developing
children have mastered false belief, appearance/reality, Level 2 perspective
taking, and numerous other forms of early theory of mind. Furthermore—
and as touched on earlier—even toddlers show some understanding, espe-
cially for states other than beliefs, and even infants are in various ways tuned
in to and responsive to the social world (Carpendale & Lewis, 2015).
The interest that the field has shown in theory of mind no doubt has many
sources, but these early theory-of-mind successes may be one of the initial
bases for interest. The Piagetian model dominant at the time told us mainly
what preschoolers do not yet know. Research on theory of mind provided a
valuable corrective by demonstrating the many important things that they
do know.
A further conclusion—and a further reason for interest—is that these
forms of knowledge make a difference in children’s lives. Theory of mind has
been shown to relate to a wide range of developmentally important outcomes
in both the cognitive and social realms: the more advanced the child’s
theory-of-mind abilities, the more advanced the child’s social and cognitive
functioning (Astington, 2003; Derksen et al., 2018). Theory of mind is thus
6 Advanced Theory of Mind
theory- of-
mind measure: the second- order false belief task (Perner &
Wimmer, 1985). Table 1.1 shows one of the scenarios that were used. It was
one of six versions of the task that Perner and Wimmer created, versions that
differed in some ways procedurally but that produced essentially the same
results.
Chapter 2 will discuss what these results were, along with a review of
results from the second-order task more generally. But I can give one basic
result here: As expected, second-order false belief is indeed more difficult
than first-order false belief.
Various differences between the first- order and second- order tasks
might contribute to the difference in difficulty. Here I suggest four. (See also
Miller, 2009.)
A first difference is that there are now two mental states to which the
child must attend and not just one. In the first-order case the child must
Table 1.1 One of the Perner and Wimmer (1985) Scenarios Used to Assess
Children’s Understanding of Second-Order False Belief
This is a story about John and Mary who live in this village. This morning John and
Mary are together in the park. In the park there is also an ice-cream man in his van.
Mary would like to buy an ice cream, but she has left her money at home. So she is very
sad. “Don’t be sad,” says the ice-cream man, “you can fetch your money and buy some
ice cream later. I’ll be here in the park all afternoon.” “Oh good,” says Mary, “I’ll be back
in the afternoon to buy some ice cream. I’ll make sure I won’t forget my money then.”
So Mary goes home. . . . She lives in this house. She goes inside the house. Now John is
on his own in the park. To his surprise he sees the ice-cream man leaving the park in
his van. “Where are you going?” asks John. The ice-cream man says “I’m going to drive
my van to the church. There is no one in the park to buy ice cream; so perhaps I can sell
some outside the church.”
The ice-cream man drives over to the church. On his way he passes Mary’s house. Mary
is looking out of the window and spots the van. “Where are you going?” she asks. “I’m
going to the church. I’ll be able to sell more ice cream there,” answers the man. “It’s a
good thing I saw you,” says Mary. Now John doesn’t know that Mary talked to the ice-
cream man. He doesn’t know that!
Now John has to go home. After lunch he is doing his homework. He can’t do one of the
tasks. So he goes over to Mary’s house to ask for help. Mary’s mother answers the door.
“Is Mary in?” asks John. “Oh,” says Mary’s mother. “She’s just left. She said she was going
to get an ice cream.”
Test question: So John runs to look for Mary. Where does he think she has gone?
Justification question: Why does he think she has gone to the ____?
Note: From “ ‘John Thinks That Mary Thinks That . . .’ Attribution of Second-Order Beliefs by 5-to
10-Year-Old Children,” by J. Perner and H. Wimmer, 1985, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,
39, p. 441. Copyright 1985 by Elsevier. Reprinted with permission.
8 Advanced Theory of Mind
understand what Maxi believes. In the second-order case the child must un-
derstand what both John and Mary believe.
A second difference concerns the target for John’s belief. In the first-order
case the belief concerns some aspect of the world—where the chocolate is
located, what is inside the crayon box. In the second-order case the belief
concerns another belief—where Mary believes the ice cream truck is. The
child must therefore realize that beliefs can take other beliefs and not simply
empirical facts as their target, and also that such beliefs, like beliefs in ge-
neral, may sometimes be false.
A third difference concerns the number of propositions involved. In the
first-order case there is just one: Maxi believes that . . . In the second-order
case there are two: John believes that Mary believes that . . . Furthermore, the
propositions are not merely conjoined; rather, they take a recursive form that
is potentially endless (A believes that B believes that C believes . . .). Even if
lengthy chains are beyond the child (or any of us), some capacity for recur-
sive reasoning is necessary to solve the second-order problem.
A final difference is that the second-order task places more response
demands on the child than does the first-order task. Because there is more
that must be conveyed, the typical second-order scenario is longer than the
typical first-order scenario, it contains more informational units, it requires
more linguistic understanding, it puts more demands on working memory,
and it concludes with a more complexly worded test question. We will see in
Chapter 2 that later researchers have attempted to simplify the Perner and
Wimmer approach in various ways. Nevertheless, in any version the second-
order task remains more complex than the first-order one.
How general are these differences between first-order and advanced
theory of mind? As we will see, the answer is not perfectly. Some of the char-
acteristics just described do not apply to every task under the “advanced”
heading, and thus to every comparison between first-order and advanced.
Conversely, other tasks at the advanced level sometimes incorporate com-
plexities not found in the second-order false belief task, and thus provide
further possible bases for differences between early and later developments.
Based simply on this sort of task analysis, it is difficult to identify any feature
that is both necessary and sufficient to define advanced theory of mind.
Of course, decisions about the nature of advanced theory of mind are not
based solely on task analysis. It is an empirical question whether potentially
important characteristics are in fact important. It is also an empirical ques-
tion how best to characterize advanced theory of mind: whether in terms
Introduction 9
The purpose of the present section is to preview the major questions to which
this book is directed. The most general of these questions is the one just
noted: how to characterize advanced theory of mind. But a number of other
questions are also of interest, both as steps toward an answer to the how-to-
characterize question and as important issues in their own right.
As always, an accurate descriptive picture is the starting point. Before we
can explain what develops, we need to know what it is that we are attempting
to explain. And explanation aside, a description of the phenomena of interest
is a basic part of any science. One thing we want to know, therefore, is what
sorts of competencies make up advanced theory of mind and when in devel-
opment children master the various forms.
Of course, any pattern of mean or modal performance will not apply
in every case; unless floor or ceiling effects occur, all attempts to measure
constructs of interest yield differences, not uniformity. A further thing
we want to know, therefore, is what these differences are and where they
come from.
The answer to the “what” question is in most instances straightforward. In
the great majority of cases, the individual differences studied are differences
in rate of development—some children master theory-of mind milestones
more quickly than do others. As we will see at various points, differences in
rate of mastery are important, for such differences show both concurrent and
prospective relations to numerous other aspects of children’s development.
But differences in speed of mastery are not the only possible way in which
people may differ, especially when we move to older ages and more complex
developments. Other kinds of individual differences in addition to rate will
be considered at various points throughout the book.
Whatever the differences at issue, various forms of evidence speak to the
question of where differences in development come from. One approach
is to compare groups that may differ in the factors that are assumed to be
10 Advanced Theory of Mind
of mind is both more extended and more varied than is first-order develop-
ment; thus possible sequences are clearly a question of interest.
The relations among theory-of-mind developments are not the only re-
lations of interest. As in the first-order literature, advanced theory of mind
is of interest not simply in itself but also as a possible contributor to other
developments. And as in the first-order literature, an important challenge,
which will be addressed at various points, is how to move beyond correlations
in such research to establish causality.
The questions identified to this point all assume a focus on overt behavior—
it is behavior, after all, that indicates what is or is not understood. Especially
in recent years, however, a research literature has emerged directed to what
lies beneath the behavior, that is, the neurological underpinnings for theory-
of-mind reasoning. In addition to constituting an important scientific en-
deavor in its own right, such research provides further evidence with respect
to many of the questions just summarized—in particular, the question of re-
lations among different forms of theory of mind.
I conclude this overview with a return to the starting-point question of
how best to characterize advanced theory of mind. I have been stressing
that this question is an empirical one. But it is also a theoretical question.
Theory of mind has been a theoretical enterprise from the start; three ge-
neral theories emerged within a few years of the first theory-of-mind study,
and a fourth soon joined them. For now I settle for a brief tabular summary
of these theories, with further points to be added as we go (see Table 1.2).
But I will note now that each of the theories was devised primarily to explain
lower-order developments and has been most fully elaborated with respect
to such developments. How well each speaks to advanced theory of mind is
clearly an important question.
Table 1.3 provides a summary of the issues just discussed.
There are various ways to organize the research literature on advanced theory
of mind. Studies might be grouped in terms of the mental state being judged,
or in terms of the person making the judgment, or in terms of the person
being judged, or in terms of the causes or the consequences of relatively good
or relatively poor understanding.
Table 1.2 Theories of Theory of Mind
Continued
Table 1.2 Continued
This chapter and the next address children’s understanding of mental states—
cognitive states in the present chapter, affective states in the next. Beliefs have
been the most often studied cognitive state, and second-order false belief has
been the most often studied form of belief. The discussion begins, therefore,
with second-order false belief.
Advanced Theory of Mind. Scott A. Miller, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197573174.003.0002
Understanding of Cognitive States 19
Table 2.1 One of the Sullivan, Zaitchik, and Tager-Flusberg (1994) Scenarios
Used to Assess Children’s Understanding of Second-Order False Belief
Tonight it’s Peter’s birthday and Mom is surprising him with a puppy. She has hidden
the puppy in the basement. Peter says, “Mom, I really hope you get me a puppy for my
birthday.” Remember, Mom wants to surprise Peter with a puppy. So, instead of telling
Peter she got him a puppy, Mom says, “Sorry Peter, I did not get you a puppy for your
birthday. I got you a really great toy instead.”
Probe Question 1. “Did Mom really get Peter a toy for his birthday?”
Probe Question 2. “Did Mom tell Peter she got him a toy for his birthday?”
Probe Question 3. “Why did Mom tell Peter that she got him a toy for his birthday?”
Now, Peter says to Mom, “I’m going outside to play.” On his way outside, Peter goes
down to the basement to fetch his roller skates. In the basement, Peter finds the
birthday puppy! Peter says to himself, “Wow, Mom didn’t get me a toy, she really got me
a puppy for my birthday.” Mom does not see Peter go down to the basement and find
the birthday puppy.
Nonlinguistic control question. “Does Peter know that his Mom got him a puppy for his
birthday?”
Linguistic control question. “Does Mom know that Peter saw the birthday puppy in the
basement?”
Now, the telephone rings, ding-a-ling! Peter’s grandmother calls to find out what time
the birthday party is. Grandma asks Mom on the phone, “Does Peter know what you
really got him for his birthday?”
Second-order ignorance question. “What does Mom say to Grandma?”
Memory-aid: Now remember, Mom does not know that Peter saw what she got him for
his birthday.
Then, Grandma says to Mom, “What does Peter think you got him for his birthday?”
Second-order false belief question. What does Mom say to Grandma?
Justification question. Why does Mom say that?
Note: From “Preschoolers Can Attribute Second-Order Beliefs,” by K. Sullivan, D. Zaitchik, and
H. Tager-Flusberg, 1994, Developmental Psychology, 30, p. 402. Copyright 1994 by the American
Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission.
Developmental Findings
false belief. Although most of the evidence for this conclusion comes from
between-group comparisons, within-child data lead to the same conclusion
(Hayashi, 2007; Lecce & Hughes, 2010; Osterhaus, Koerber, & Sodian, 2016;
Parker, McDonald, & Miller, 2007). Indeed, the within-child data suggest an
invariant sequence between the two developments, which is what would be
expected if understanding first-order false belief is a necessary step in mas-
tering second-order false belief. In all of the relevant studies, more than 90%
of children show the expected sequence, and the few exceptions are probably
best attributed to measurement error.
The preceding does not mean that method of assessment has no effect
on children’s performance. In fact, it has a clear effect. Studies adopting the
Sullivan et al. approach typically report success approximately a year earlier
than do those using the Perner and Wimmer approach—thus success at 5 or
6 (and occasionally even 4 ) rather than 6 or 7.
Why does this difference occur? I draw the following from a fuller discus-
sion in Miller (2009).
The most obvious basis is the difference in complexity between the two
paradigms. The Sullivan et al. approach was intended to reduce the linguistic
and information-processing demands of the task, thus revealing any bud-
ding competence that might have been masked by these features, and it
clearly succeeds in doing so. As noted, other researchers have added still fur-
ther simplifications. In general, the less complex the procedure, the better
the performance, a conclusion that emerges from both between-study and
within-study examinations of the issue. Sullivan et al. (1994), in fact, showed
that a simplified version of the Perner and Wimmer procedure resulted in
better performance than that in the original study, although not as good as
the performance elicited by their new procedure.
The evidence is less clear with respect to a second possible contributor to
the difference in difficulty: the presence of deception in the Sullivan et al.
scenarios. Deception is (at least sometimes) helpful at the first-order level
(Wellman et al., 2001). At the first-order level, however, it is the character
whose belief is being judged who is the target of the deception; it is not sur-
prising, then, that children may be more likely to attribute a false belief when
they see this character deceived. As Table 2.1 shows, in the second-order case
it is not the target for belief ascription (the mother in the example) who is
deceived; rather it is this person who attempts to deceive the other protago-
nist in the story. The deception-belief connection is thus less straightforward
than in the first-order case.
Understanding of Cognitive States 21
A study of mine provides the only comparison of the two possible forms
of deception in a second-order scenario (Miller, 2013b). More basically, it
also provides the only within-study attempt to determine whether decep-
tion of any form is in fact helpful. The kindergarten participants responded
to three kinds of trials: one in which character A (e.g., the mother in the
Sullivan et al. scenario) attempted to deceive character B (e.g., the boy in
the scenario), one in which character B attempted to deceive character A,
and one in which no deception occurred. Only the A deceives B condition
led to better performance than in the no-deception condition, a finding that
suggests that Sullivan et al.’s (1994) inclusion of deception of the A-B form
was in fact helpful. The proposed explanation for this effect focused on the
salience with which the mother’s belief is conveyed to the child. The child
hears the mother state the belief that she intends to implant; it is perhaps not
surprising that moments later the child judges correctly that this is the belief
that she believes her son holds.
A comparison of Tables 1.1 and 2.1 reveals one further difference between
the two approaches. The Sullivan et al. approach includes an “ignorance
question” (“What does Mom say to Grandma?”) prior to the false belief ques-
tion. Two findings follow from the inclusion of this question. First, the igno-
rance question turns out to be easier than the false belief question (Hogrefe,
Wimmer, & Perner, 1986). Second, the ignorance question also turns out to
be helpful; children are more likely to recognize a target’s false belief if they
have first judged that the target is ignorant. Here, then, is another contributor
to the difference in results between the two approaches.
Pointing Ahead
The present treatment does not exhaust the issues surrounding second-
order false belief. Most obviously, it has not addressed the basic question
of where such knowledge comes from, as well as why there are individual
differences in how quickly children acquire the knowledge. In this and
the next chapter, I defer the discussion of these questions until late in the
chapter, once all the developments to be discussed have been presented. In
part, this decision reflects the fact that the literature is often too limited to
permit a task-by-task analysis. In addition, the forms of relevant evidence
and (as we will see) the general conclusions are the same across different
developments, and it will therefore be most informative to consider the var-
ious outcomes together.
Also of interest are relations between second-order false belief and other
developments. As Chapter 1 indicated, an important question concerns
the fit between various advanced theory-of-mind developments—do they
emerge in synchrony, for example, or perhaps in sequence, or perhaps in no
consistent pattern at all across different children? This question cannot be
addressed until other developments under the advanced heading have been
introduced, and it therefore will be the subject of the last section of Chapter 3.
Just as in the first-order literature, relations with developments out-
side the domain of theory of mind are also of interest. Indeed, Perner and
Wimmer (1985) made this point in the first report of second-order false be-
lief. Chapters 6 and 7 will discuss the relations that have been examined.
Higher-Order Recursion
As its label indicates, second-order false belief involves two levels of recur-
sion: A thinks that B thinks . . . The recursive chain need not stop at this point.
It is also possible that A thinks that B thinks that C thinks . . . (third-order re-
cursion) or that A thinks that B thinks that C thinks that D thinks . . . (fourth-
order recursion). Note also that the same protagonist may appear more than
once in such chains—for example, A thinks that B thinks that A thinks . . . The
Peanuts example in Chapter 1 is of this sort.
The first examination of higher levels of recursive thinking predated the
theory-of-mind era by more than a decade (Miller, Kessel, & Flavell, 1970).
Miller and colleagues devised a thought-bubbles procedure in which bubbles
24 Advanced Theory of Mind
above the characters’ heads indicated what they were thinking. Bubbles
within bubbles then served to convey various levels of recursive thought.
Figure 2.1 shows two examples. In the first the boy is thinking that he is
thinking of himself. In the second the boy is thinking that the girl is thinking
of the father thinking of the mother.
Both the Miller et al. (1970) study and subsequent adaptations of the
thought-bubbles approach (Mueller & Overton, 2010; van den Bos, de Rooij,
Sumter, & Westenberg, 2016) lead to two main conclusions. Both are ex-
pectable. The first is that the difficulty of the task increases as the levels of
recursion increase. The second is that performance improves with age, a con-
clusion that comes not only from cross-sectional but also from longitudinal
comparisons (van den Bos et al., 2016). The more recent studies (Mueller &
Overton, 2010; van den Bos et al., 2016) make clear that improvements con-
tinue well into adolescence.
Imposing though the quoted sentence seems, it obviously does not appear
in isolation; rather it comes after the subject has watched a film, as often as
he or she wishes, in which Megan and Lauren and the others talk and act in
various ways that convey what each of them knows or feels and what Megan
ultimately wants or does not want. According to the authors, the theory-of-
mind processing in such cases is implicit—something that both evolution
and much social experience have prepared us to do automatically and largely
effortlessly. This is a claim that we will return to, for the idea that much
theory-of-mind usage is automatic and implicit has become a major theme
in current theorizing. We will also return to higher-level recursive thinking
in Chapters 6 and 7 in a discussion of the consequences of advanced forms of
theory of mind.
Strange Stories
The measure to be discussed now is one of the three most often used meas-
ures in the study of advanced theory of mind, the others being the second-
order false belief task and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, a measure to
be considered in Chapter 3.
I begin the discussion of Strange Stories with a brief history of the de-
velopment of the measure. It is worth doing so, because it is the same his-
tory that underlies a high proportion of the measures of advanced theory
of mind.
I noted in Chapter 1 that theory of mind has long been a central topic in the
study of autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The first study of ASD
and theory of mind came only 2 years after the Wimmer and Perner (1983)
study, and it showed that many children with ASD apparently never master
first-order false belief, a finding supportive of the theory that the well-known
social deficits of ASD reflect an absence of theory-of-mind abilities (Baron-
Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985). Still, some children did master the task, albeit
on a very delayed schedule. What, then, about second-order false belief? In
the first examination of the issue, no child with ASD showed any success on
the second-order task, even though all were well past the usual age of mastery
(Baron-Cohen, 1989). Again, however, the deficit turned out not to be uni-
versal, for in later studies some children, although again well past the usual
age, did succeed (e.g., Bowler, 1992). It remained unclear, therefore, whether
any aspects of theory of mind are forever absent in individuals with ASD,
28 Advanced Theory of Mind
even those high on the autism spectrum, or whether such developments are
simply delayed rather than absent.
The Strange Stories measure, created by Francesca Happe (1994), was in-
tended to address this question. It was the first of many measures designed
originally for the study of ASD; other examples include the Reading the
Mind in the Eyes test (Baron-Cohen, Jolliffe, Mortimore, & Robinson, 1997),
the Faux Pas test (Baron-Cohen, O’Riordan, Stone, Jones, & Plaisted, 1999),
the Awkward Moments test (Heavey, Phillips, Baron-Cohen, & Rutter, 2000),
Stories from Everyday Life (Kaland et al., 2002), the Reading the Mind in
the Voice test (Golan, Baron-Cohen, Hill, & Rutherford, 2007), the Reading
the Mind in Films test (Golan, Baron-Cohen, & Golan, 2008), and the Moral
Dilemmas Film test (Barnes, Lombardo, Wheelwright, & Baron-Cohen,
2009). In this and the next chapter, I discuss the application of these measures
to typically developing children; Chapter 9 will discuss the work on ASD.
Table 2.3 shows a sampling of items from the Strange Stories measure.
As can be seen, the focus of the measure is on nonliteral utterances, that is,
utterances whose actual meaning is different from what a literal reading of
the utterance would indicate. In addition to the examples in the table, the
other speech forms included are misunderstanding, appearance/reality, for-
getting, sarcasm, persuasion, and double bluff.
The Strange Stories measure is broader in scope than the second-order
false belief task, requiring a range of varied judgments and not simply a di-
chotomous choice between two alternatives. It also embeds its problems and
related questions within more naturalistic, everyday settings, without the
reminders and prompts that characterize the false belief task. Both of these
features were expected to increase the difficulty of the task, thus providing a
further test of whether some forms of advanced theory of mind are absent
in ASD.
Of course, difficulty was not the only criterion in constructing the
measure; it was also necessary to ensure that correct responses did in fact de-
pend on theory of mind. Understanding nonliteral utterances meets this cri-
terion, because such understanding requires going beyond the surface form
to take into account the speaker’s underlying intention in producing the ut-
terance. To make sense of what has been said, the participant must realize
that the speaker intends to implant a particular mental state in the listener—
thus A intends that B thinks or feels or whatever. Two mental states, and the
relation between them, must be understood.
Table 2.3 Examples of Scenarios from the Strange Stories Measure
Note: From “An Advanced Test of Theory of Mind: Understanding of Story Characters’ Thoughts and
Feelings by Able Autistic, Mentally Handicapped and Normal Children and Adults,” by F. Happe,
1994, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24, pp. 147–151. Copyright 1994 by Plenum
Publishing Corporation. With kind permission from Springer Science & Business Media.
30 Advanced Theory of Mind
In scoring the measure, responses to the Why question are critical. To re-
ceive credit, the participant must identify the mental state in question and
also the speaker’s reason for creating that particular state. In the case of a lie,
for example, the speaker’s intent is to implant a false belief that absolves her
of responsibility for some misdeed. In contrast, in the case of a white lie, the
intent is also to implant a false belief but in this case with the goal of sparing
the feelings of those to whom the utterance is directed. In the case of most
of the other forms of utterance, the intent is not to deceive the listener but
to convey a particular message via the nonliteral utterance. With irony, for
example, the intent is to convey the speaker’s attitude with respect to the situ-
ation in question, an attitude that can be either positive or (as in the example
in the table) negative.
As intended, the Strange Stories measure is in fact more difficult than the
second-order false belief task. The original Happe (1994) study was the first
to demonstrate this point, and it did so for both a sample of children with
ASD and a control sample of typically developing children. With occasional
exceptions (e.g., Bosco, Gabbatore, & Tirassa, 2014), subsequent studies led
to the same conclusion. Children as young as 5 or 6 (in the handful of studies
that go that young) show little success on Strange Stories; success begins to
emerge by middle childhood; and performance continues to improve, al-
though typically without reaching ceiling, through adolescence. Indeed,
some adults are less than perfect in their response to the Strange Stories
measure (Murray et al., 2017).
A further point is worth noting here, a point that applies to most of the
tasks that soon joined second-order false belief as measures of advanced
theory of mind. Because they are more difficult, these additional measures
can reveal individual differences not captured by the false belief task, that is,
differences among children who perform perfectly on false belief. In addi-
tion, the false belief task is essentially dichotomous (success or failure), and
the only way to obtain a range of scores is to administer a number of trials.
Most of the more recent measures are designed to yield a range of scores. On
the Strange Stories measure, for example, the range of possible scores (as-
suming standard administration and scoring) is from 0 to 24. For this reason,
too, such measures can reveal individual differences not captured by pass/fail
measures such as false belief.
One kind of difference that Strange Stories reveals is a gender differ-
ence: Girls sometimes outperform boys (e.g., Devine & Hughes, 2013).
The “sometimes” qualifier is important, because many studies report no
Understanding of Cognitive States 31
difference between the sexes. But when differences do appear, they almost
always favor females. Such, as we will see in Chapter 3, is also the case for sev-
eral other measures of advanced theory of mind. Although various proposals
have been offered, there is as yet no agreed-upon explanation for why such
differences occur. Chapter 3 will discuss the various possibilities that have
been proposed.
Nonliteral Utterances
Lying
The relevance of theory of mind for lying was succinctly stated by Talwar,
Gordon, and Lee (2007, p. 804): “Lying, in essence, is theory of mind in ac-
tion.” The purpose of a lie is to instill a false belief. It is difficult to see how
children can lie if they do not yet understand that beliefs can be false.
Yet very young children can lie. Charles Darwin (1877) was the first to
report this phenomenon in writing about his 30-month-old son Doddy.
Subsequent research has confirmed Darwin’s belief that children as young as
2 or 3 can tell lies, a conclusion that has emerged in both naturalistic (Newton,
Reddy, & Bull, 2000) and experimental (Evans & Lee, 2013) examinations of
the issue. Understanding of false belief (at least as typically assessed) does not
seem to be a necessary basis for telling a lie.
Nevertheless, understanding of false belief is clearly a helpful basis. Both
the frequency and the sophistication of lies increase across the early child-
hood years, and both show a clear relation to understanding of false belief
(Ding, Teo, & Tay, 2021; Talwar & Lee, 2008). Children who understand false
belief are more likely to lie than are children who do not, and they are also
more likely to lie successfully than are children who do not.
How might advanced theory of mind contribute? As noted, second-
order false belief is the most often evoked possible contributor, and its
mastery has been argued to make possible at least three post-preschool
developments in children’s understanding and production of lies (see also
Lee & Imuta, 2021).
One is the ability to distinguish lies from other nonliteral utterances.
Two features mark this distinction: the speaker’s belief about the listener’s
knowledge and the speaker’s intention in producing the utterance. With
lies the speaker believes that the listener does not know the truth, whereas
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neighbourhood of the divide do they become higher and give the
country a more mountainous character.” The hill-land also sends
spurs into the low-lying plains, which appear as outliers.
The great plains extend from the hill-land to the sea. Towards the
hills there is dry flat land which gradually passes into swamps.
Several travellers describe swamps and marshes at the foot of the
hills and even in the mountain land. “On the other hand,” as
Posewitz points out, “outlines of the dry flat land stretch far into the
swampy lowlands, and isolated high-lying districts are then formed in
the middle of marshy low-lying plains.”
PALÆOZOIC
MESOZOIC
The Tertiary “hill-land” forms a belt round the mountain land, which
in some places reaches to the sea, but in others is separated from it
by wide alluvial plains. It has been mentioned that the hill-land not
only surrounds the mountain land, but also penetrates within it,
connecting the separate chains; and it also surrounds isolated
mountain chains.
From a geotectonic standpoint, the Tertiary hill-land only averages
200 to 300 feet. Towards the border of the mountains the hills
become higher where they are of Eocene Age; towards the plains
their height diminishes, and they form low ranges of Miocene or
Pliocene Age.
Verbeek systematised as well as added to the labours of Horner,
Schwaner, and C. de Groot, and established a threefold division of
the older Tertiary beds for the south of Borneo.
1. Sandstone Stage.—The lowermost beds are predominantly
sandstones, and contain the “Indian coal” seams. The sandstones
are usually of a white or yellow colour, and always contain flakes of a
silvery-white mica; the cement is argilaceous. They are probably
derived from mica schists. Alternating with them are bands of shale,
carbonaceous shale, and coal. The sandstone beds are much
pierced and faulted by younger eruptive rocks.
2. Marl Stage.—Among yellowish-white sandstones are the
following beds: bluish-grey “Letten” and shales without fossils;
bluish-grey “Letten” with crustacean remains; grey Marl, with marl-
clay nodules, often of the large size and very full of fossils. The
percentage of lime in these beds increases from below upwards.
3. Limestone Stage.—This stage consists of a hard whitish or
bluish limestone rich in fossils, and contains numerous nummulites.
All the above strata are pierced in numerous places by basalts and
hornblende-augite-andesites, the intrusion of which has disturbed
their bedding. The andesites are always accompanied by
widespread deposits of tuffs and volcanic agglomerates.
Verbeek[3] has recently recast his original allocation of these beds,
and now he regards the “Sandstone Stage” as Eocene; the “Marl
Stage” as Oligocene (Nari group of India); and the “Limestone
Stage” to the later Miocene.
Above the andesites are later Tertiary shales and sandstones,
which were previously regarded as of Miocene Age, but Verbeek
now assigns them to the Pliocene. A lower band of shales and an
upper series of sandstones can be distinguished; beds of a true
brown coal are often present.
The Tertiary geology of Sarawak has chiefly been elucidated by A.
H. Everett, but a great deal more remains to be done. In the district
of the Sarawak River a hilly formation, comprising sandstones and
limestones, extends from the coast to the mountains at the
boundary. Exact details as to its composition are as yet wanting; we
only know that the coal-bearing sandstone of the Eocene occurs,
and that there are Tertiary coral reefs. The limestone beds, which
appear to occur sporadically in Sarawak, are penetrated by
numerous caves; they dip at a high angle and contain many fossils.
Intrusions of andesite have been found in the district of the Upper
Sarawak River. These recent eruptive rocks have often disturbed the
bedding of the coal-bearing strata. They are described as basalts
and felspar-porphyrites, occurring in hills, or as dykes in the
lowlands.
In the Bay of Brunei the Tertiary coal-bearing sandstone hills
extend down to the coast. Coal is now worked at a mine close to
Brooketown, whence it is exported.
The Limbang River, in its lower and middle course, traverses a
hilly country, the elevations rising from 500 to 1,500 feet in height,
and consisting of hard sandstone, which contains coal in places, as
in the Madalam tributary. Limestone rocks are also found in the
middle course of the Limbang. In part they are Tertiary coral reefs, in
part older rocks.
On the island of Labuan the Tertiary beds are greatly developed
and contain coal. The Rev. J. E. Tenison-Woods (Nature, April 23,
1885) has stated that “the Labuan coals are probably of Oolite age,
and not connected with any marine formation, but apparently of
Eolian origin.” I am not aware that this view has received any support
or confirmation.
Concretions of clay-ironstone are often present in the shales.
QUATERNARY
ALLUVIUM
The river deposits show their greatest development in south
Borneo, where they form extended marshy plains. They are next
best exemplified in west Borneo; while they are least developed in
the east and north. They are composed of a dark brown, black, or
bluish clay, which is often rich in humus in its upper layers; in the
lower layers it is of a harder consistency. It is often mixed with, or
traversed by, seams of sand; the latter, as a rule, occurring on a
lower level. The boundary with the older Quaternary cannot be
sharply drawn.
The bog formation and the marsh-land of the lower river courses
of north Borneo are of less account than in the south and west owing
to the great development of the sea sand, which hinders the
formation of morasses. They occur only in the river deltas, some of
which are of considerable extent. The great delta of the Rejang is a
morass, and the swamps can only be travelled over by boats. On the
Baram the alluvium extends for about a hundred miles from the
coast.
The sea-sand formation extends from Sarawak as a long, broad
strip of sand dunes, right along the coast, excepting the river
mouths.
PUNANS