Entering a Community of Minds: An Experiential Approach to ‘Theory of Mind’

Nelson, Katherine; Skwerer, Daniela Plesa; Goldman, Sylvie; Henseler, Sarah; Presler, Nechama; Walkenfeld, Faye Fried

doi:10.1159/000067779

Cited by 108 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…The analysis excludes more recent results showing that explicit questioning on false belief tasks does enhance 3-year-olds' performance (Joseph, 1998;Nelson et al, 2003;Surian & Leslie, 1999).…”

Section: Look First and Meta-analysismentioning

confidence: 59%

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Competence and performance in belief-desire reasoning across two cultures: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about false belief?

et al. 2006

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Look first across two cultures 2 AbstractA recent meta-analysis of false belief task performance (Wellman, H.M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory mind development: The truth about falsebelief. Child Development, 72, confirmed that there is change in false belief task performance across the 3-5 year age range. The analysis identified several 'performance' factors that influence task success, including manipulations that highlight the salience of the initial belief content (e.g. by asking where Sally will look first for the marble). Because a proportion of variance in performance remained unexplained even when identified performance factors were controlled for, the authors concluded that children's improvement is the result of conceptual change. Further, the analysis showed that manipulations such as look first improve performance only in children who are in the older part of the 3-5 year range, and thus plausibly operating with a 'transitional' theory of mind. Here, we present three studies systematically investigating the 'look first' manipulation which showed that: i) the advantage for the look first question can be demonstrated in children across different cultures, ii) look first has an effect that is additive to the improvement with age; there is no interaction such that older children gain more benefit from younger children, iii) performance in younger children can be, but is not always, elevated to levels that are statistically above 'chance. These results are discussed in terms of models of belief-desire reasoning in which both conceptual competence and performance factors play central roles.Look first across two cultures 3

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Section: Look First and Meta-analysismentioning

confidence: 59%

“…This specific pattern of results is not consistent with the conceptual change explanation of 'look first' and similar manipulations offered by Wellman et al, (2001) the fact the 1998 cut off date excluded several 'look first' type manipulations (Joseph, 1998;Nelson et al, 2003;Surian & Leslie, 1999;see Scholl & Leslie, 2001). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Competence and performance in belief-desire reasoning across two cultures: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about false belief?

et al. 2006

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“…One further idea that is often mentioned in relation to Vygotsky's ideas is enculturation (e.g., Astington, 1996;Nelson, Plesa Skwerer, Goldman, Henseler, Presler, & Walkenfeld, 2003;Raver & Leadbeater, 1993), according to which exposure to cultural norms of explaining behavior allows children to -internalize the folk psychology of their particular culture‖ (Astington & Olson, 1995, p. 184). As Astington (2004) has noted, enculturation accounts do not necessarily entail that children are passive participants in a process of absorption of cultural norms.…”

Section: Five Vygotskian Ideasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nelson's primary focus has been on children's acquisition of conceptual SU through their entry into a ‗Community of Minds' (Nelson, 2004;Nelson et al, 2003). Her work in this respect draws on a number of Vygotskian concepts, such as internalization.…”

Section: Vygotskian Accounts Of Su Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting Vygotskian about theory of mind: Mediation, dialogue, and the development of social understanding

Fernyhough

2008

Developmental Review

201

150

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“…I have proposed a dual process theory to explain the important advances in cognitive development during the preschool years (ages 3 -5) (Nelson 1996; in press;Nelson et al 2003). Specifically, the achievement of representational language supplements the initial nonlinguistic experientially based conceptual system with a second linguistic representation component available to the cognitive processing system.…”

Section: Katherine Nelsonmentioning

confidence: 99%

The cognitive functions of language

2002

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This paper explores a variety of different versions of the thesis that natural language is involved in human thinking. It distinguishes amongst strong and weak forms of this thesis, dismissing some as implausibly strong and others as uninterestingly weak. Strong forms dismissed include the view that language is conceptually necessary for thought (endorsed by many philosophers) and the view that language is de facto the medium of all human conceptual thinking (endorsed by many philosophers and social scientists). Weak forms include the view that language is necessary for the acquisition of many human concepts and the view that language can serve to scaffold human thought processes. The paper also discusses the thesis that language may be the medium of conscious propositional thinking, but argues that this cannot be its most fundamental cognitive role. The idea is then proposed that natural language is the medium for nondomain-specific thinking, serving to integrate the outputs of a variety of domain-specific conceptual faculties (or central-cognitive "quasimodules"). Recent experimental evidence in support of this idea is reviewed and the implications of the idea are discussed, especially for our conception of the architecture of human cognition. Finally, some further kinds of evidence which might serve to corroborate or refute the hypothesis are mentioned. The overall goal of the paper is to review a wide variety of accounts of the cognitive function of natural language, integrating a number of different kinds of evidence and theoretical consideration in order to propose and elaborate the most plausible candidate.Keywords: Cognitive evolution; conceptual module; consciousness; domain-general; inner speech; language; logical form (LF); thought Peter Carruthers is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. Until recently he Directed the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of eight books, coeditor of four, and has published numerous articles in journals and collections. There are two major foci to his main research area in philosophy of psychology. One is the nature of consciousness, where he has developed and defended a form of higher-order thought theory. The other is the architecture of human cognition, and the place of natural language within it.that language is only a channel, or conduit, for transferring thoughts into and out of the mind, they are then obliged to claim that the stream of inner verbalization is more-or-less epiphenomenal in character. (Some possible minor cognitive roles for inner speech, which should nevertheless be acceptable to those adopting this perspective, will be canvassed later.) The real thinking will be going on elsewhere, in some other medium of representation.One reason for the popularity of the communicative conception amongst cognitive scientists is that almost all now believe that language is a distinct input-output module of the mind (at least in some ...

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Entering a Community of Minds: An Experiential Approach to ‘Theory of Mind’

Cited by 108 publications

References 36 publications

Competence and performance in belief-desire reasoning across two cultures: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about false belief?

Competence and performance in belief-desire reasoning across two cultures: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about false belief?

Getting Vygotskian about theory of mind: Mediation, dialogue, and the development of social understanding

The cognitive functions of language

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