Acquiring a Conception of Mind

A Review of Psychological Research and Theory

Peter Mitchell

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780863777370
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317715573
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Index: Psychology

It seems the mind has evolved into such a powerful form that we are able to go beyond knowing the world and move towards knowing the mind itself. Being able to comprehend the mind permits smooth social interaction, since it allows us to anticipate the future actions of those around us. The apparently effortless quality of social co-ordination belies the complex process of conceptualization and inference that is actually at work. The odyssey of childhood, especially in the early years, presents a topic for investigation and speculation. A purpose of this book is to provide a thoroughly readable in-depth review of recent findings and theories about the development of understanding mind. In preparing this, a major goal was seen as composing text that is appealing in itself as a piece of writing. This book covers development from infancy to adulthood, and also considers related disorders of development especially autism. It goes beyond the narrow focus on the preschool years typical of most writings on the topic. One of the main themes in the book concerns the role of language and communication in development. Language could serve as a tool that helps the child to think more in the abstract and the hypothetical, once removed from reality. Being able to communicate with language virtually means that we are able to hear the thoughts of those around us. We hear what they think from what they say. Communication could thus provide a major catalyst in promoting the development of an understanding of mind. Perhaps it is no coincidence that children with autism who supposedly have an impaired understanding of mind also have impairments in language and communication.

CHAPTER ONE
Understanding minds

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this first chapter is to introduce the topic and then provide an overview of the rest of the book. The aim of the book is to present a comprehensive and up-to-date review of research into the development of what is widely known as “theory of mind”. This is not referring to the theory held formally by a researcher, but rather to the notion or insights that ordinary people have about the mind. The human understanding of mind appears at times to be so sophisticated that it seems appropriate to say metaphorically that we all (or nearly all of us) possess our own informal theory of what the mind is. This form of intelligence (for that is what it is) has profound functional benefits that permit interpersonal understanding and social coordination. Humans live in complex social groups, and the degree to which any individual can thrive and prosper will be determined by the extent to which the individual can function smoothly in a social context. We require the skills of empathy, diplomacy, and guile if we are to be held in high esteem; without such esteem, we stand little chance of enjoying the privileges that will be experienced by those who have greater interpersonal insight. In order to investigate this intriguing and tantalising aspect of human psychology, it is valuable to explore the origin of the social intellect and how it develops. Hence, the topic forms a branch of developmental psychology.

The book contains a critical review of a wide variety of research that is organised by theme under several major subheadings, and these form the chapters of the book. The aim was to provide a description and evaluation of the research, in conjunction with a synthesis of the myriad findings and conflicting theories propounded by different psychologists. In doing this, I have expressed a particular point of view that is both supported and driven by the research I have been engaged in personally over the past decade. In other words, the book does not just reflect and summarise what is to be found in frontline journal articles, but the aim is to take our understanding a step further. In writing the book, I have assumed that the reader will already be familiar with the conventions of a psychological monograph, whilst at the same time I have striven to ensure that the book is highly readable. Given the level of detail and specialism, the book is probably most suited to people who are taking a final-year undergraduate course on the topic, people taking a postgraduate degree, and researchers who work in this field of investigation. It will also be of interest to practitioners in clinical psychology who specialise in autism; in particular the final two chapters. I shall set the scene by very briefly placing the development of an understanding of mind in its broadest context, both with respect to the history of our species and the history of the research tradition in developmental psychology.

TECHNOLOGICAL OR SOCIAL INTELLECT?

Several million years ago our ancestor Homo habillis inhabited this planet. The creature was so named because fossil evidence implicated a newly evolved ability to make and use tools. The arrival of our handyman ancestor seemed to herald the birth of technical and technological intelligence that we take as the precursor of our own scientific and mathematical competence. Presumably, without such competence the industrial revolution would never have occurred, though obviously sociological processes featured prominently in contributing to the unfolding of our history. Although there are negative ramifications of the fruits of our technological prowess, it is sometimes difficult not to celebrate and admire the achievements. We have conquered the sea and the air and have even ventured into space. It seems that the existence of a technological intellect over several millennia has contributed substantially to the industrial and scientific revolution that we now experience.

However, we should not lose sight of the fact that an ability to exert substantial change on our physical environment is something that has emerged very recently in the history of our species. Our species prospered for many tens of thousands of years prior to the advent of the technological revolution. It is thus tempting to suggest that, paradoxically, our technological prowess might actually be a by-product of an intelligence that evolved outside the technological arena. Indeed, the giant human intellect evolved in the context of a hunter-gatherer social milieu. Perhaps the evolutionary challenge that stimulated the ballooning of our brain and mind was the increasing complexity of the social rather than the physical environment.

In the late 20th century, perhaps it is not surprising that those who have sought to measure individual differences in intellectual ability have devised tests that are, generally speaking, of a mathematical character. People who can hold in mind lots of information all at once, and who can manipulate that information without losing the thread, are likely to be the people who do well on such tests. People who can mentally rotate figures, and abstract parts from larger patterns, will get a high score. People who have an aptitude for chess and grappling with computer programs would also probably fare well. Suppose we could identify a person whose intellectual profile matches the characteristics we assume are necessary to achieve a high score on a test of intelligence; this person might have charm, be skilful in handling people, and have lots of faithful and supportive friends. Sadly, though, it is also highly likely that the person with the fine mathematical intellectual profile is something of a loner, awkward with others, and not well liked. What are we to make of this? Are social skill, tact, sensitivity, and general intuition where people are concerned qualities that do not require much intelligence? Alternatively, do they require a different kind of cognitive activity that falls beyond the scope of a standard test of intelligence? If the latter, what is its origin? How important is its development in children?

SOCIAL INTELLECT IN APES

Nicholas Humphrey (1992) ventured to the African rainforests in search of the origin of human intelligence, with the aim of observing apes in their natural habitat. He expected to find the glimmer of a primitive mathematical and technological competence, which would be suggested by the inkling of an embryo capacity to use tools for the construction of shelters as protection against the elements. Additionally, weapons might be devised to ward off predators. Meanwhile, systematic and logical thought might be in evidence in the planning of strategies of how to forage most efficiently for food. Contrary to Humphrey’s expectations, the apes he observed in the heart of the forest apparently were not using their intellect—certainly not for the things he had anticipated. The apes were not inventive in making tools and they seemed to face no intellectually taxing challenge where food and predators were concerned.

It gradually became apparent that the apes faced a nonobvious intellectual challenge of such proportions that their cognitive abilities were pushed to their limit. The apes lived in a social group, which formed a kind of mini-society in terms of its hierarchical structure. Some were dominant and some submissive. Some were popular and some not so popular. Individuals apparently do not necessarily hold a fixed position, to which they are born, in the social order. To prosper and hold influence over others in this context seems to require very substantial intellectual ability to understand the psychology of one’s acquaintances. Esteem and survival depend critically on the ability to wield social psychological skills, which in turn presumably depend on having good insight into others. These skills would determine the individual’s prospects in reproduction, including the extent to which the reproduction was successful and profusive. According to this criterion, the successful apes were not necessarily the ones who were good at foraging, skilful with tools, or aggressive toward predators.

Accordingly, ever since Premack and Woodruff (1978) asked whether chimpanzees possess a “theory of mind” in their seminal article, the study of the ape’s social intellect has aroused great interest. It seems that chimpanzees might have some understanding of deception, be capable of empathy in a primitive sense, and possess what could qualify as a rudimentary understanding of knowledge and belief (see Povinelli, 1993, for a review), though considerable caution is required when attributing sophisticated intellectual abilities to apes (Heyes, 1993). Having said that, it is not surprising to find that the ape’s understanding of mind is far less developed than that of the human (e.g. Povinelli & Eddy, in press; Savage-Rumbaugh et al., 1993).

Having speculated very briefly on the history of interpersonal understanding, the way is prepared for considering the richness of human development in an understanding of mind. The obvious starting point is Piaget, since his writings not only dominate research into cognitive development in general, but also have a great deal to say about the development of understanding intersubjectivity. In other words, Piaget had a substantial interest in children’s emerging understanding that different people hold different visual and conceptual perspectives. Without such a conception, interpersonal understanding would be impossible.

PIAGET’S CONTRIBUTION

Briefly, among Piaget’s many remarkable insights was that we have to overcome inadequacies in our intellect that will allow us to achieve a mathematical and technical competence, with the consequence that our understanding of other people will improve also. He thus forged a link between rational thought and social behaviour. Thanks to this, we can regard Piaget as a pioneer of the cognitive approach to the origin of social understanding. Piaget suggested that in the “preoperational stage” children are egocentric, meaning that they have serious difficulty in conceiving of anybody else’s cognitive or even visual perspective. A classic example is 6- and 7-year-old children’s difficulty with the three mountains task. In this, the child is shown a model of three mountains side by side, each with a distinctive feature at the summit. The child is initially allowed to navigate right the way round the model, taking in how it looks from the various vantage points. Finally, the child stands at one particular point and is asked how the mountains look to another person situated on the opposite side of the model. To make a response, children are offered a selection of photos that show the model from the various perspectives. Children of this age wrongly tend to select a photo showing their own view in preference to one showing the array in left-right reversal.

Piaget’s interpretation was roughly as follows. The children have an intellect that is dominated by immediate appearances. Consequently, they seem to assume that their current view of the array is the only one. A bizarre implication is that effectively children are behaving as though the array undergoes radical changes in its physical structure as the child wanders around it. This is not to say that the child is ignorant of the permanence of reality but rather of the underlying objective essence and substance of reality that is non-person-specific. The child therefore cannot conceive of how a person standing in one position will have a visual experience of the array that is different from a person situated in another position. The child is thus trapped in his or her own subjective experience of the world and is hence said to be egocentric.

Piaget noticed that children of the same age show a related difficulty in making judgements about moral misdemeanours, which require an understanding of the intent behind the act rather than the extent of damage caused. For example, they judge the naughtiness of a protagonist according to the seriousness of the damage he caused rather than according to whether he was well or badly intentioned. The children thus seem to concentrate on the salient physical damage in preference to the hidden psychological motive. Being egocentric seems to prevent children from conceptual as well as perceptual role-taking.

Piaget reports that slightly older children are seemingly able to contrast their own view with another’s and are able to consider intent when making moral judgements. Although he stressed that chronological age is only indirectly related with more sophisticated judgements, nonetheless the age of success in clinically normal children seldom deviated greatly from approximately 7 years. This age norm, coupled with Piaget’s assumptions about the way in which knowledge is constructed, seems to have persuaded him that these children’s intellects had undergone a cognitive restructuring—they profited from a radical conceptual shift that allowed them to shed their immature egocentrism.

Piaget’s theory and methodology has been subjected to severe criticism (e.g. Donaldson, 1978), and in consequence there is reason to suppose that he underestimated children’s abilities. Additionally, Piaget seems to have underestimated the social and cultural contribution to development. Nonetheless, a remaining legacy of his work is the idea that children might start out with little capacity for understanding other people’s conceptual perspectives. Additionally, many researchers are attached to the idea that development of such understanding progresses through stages involving radical conceptual shifts in thought processes. In other words, we are asking questions about the character of developmental history that allows people to realise their intellectual potential to understand minds. An understanding of mind stands at the heart of the human intellect: What can we say about its development?

DEFINING A CONCEPTION OF MIND

Examples of things associated with mind are purpose, desire, imagination, daydreams, thoughts, communication, and deception. It is virtually impossible to state categorically what does and does not qualify as an understanding of mind. Nonetheless, this has not deterred brave theoreticians from making a good attempt. Premack and Woodruff (1978) define a “theory of mind” as an ability to impute mental states to others and to self. They specifically investigated the ape’s ability to understand purpose and desire. Success was defined as the ape’s ability to link the apparent intention of a protagonist with an appropriate goal or outcome. This is something their participant achieved, which led the authors to claim that apes probably do have a primitive theory of mind. The conclusion aroused considerable controversy, which stimulated something of a rethink on what qualifies as a theory of mind.

Perhaps the most influential reaction to Premack and Woodruff’s (1978) controversial argument was to be found in the commentary by Dennett (1978). He suggested that to qualify as holding an understanding of the mind as a representational organ, the individual should be able to acknowledge that people hold beliefs which govern their behaviour. Note that we would not say that a rat trained in a Skinner box exhibits behaviour that is governed by its beliefs. Rather the behaviour can be described as the product of the prior reinforcement history. However, we can say that people conceive of such and such being true and act accordingly. Sometimes, this leads to curious acts. For example, certain people might come to believe that a spiritual entity is beckoning them, tragically leading to a mass communal suicide. It is very difficult indeed to imagine how that behaviour is the product of reinforcement history, but we are able to explain it once we know that the hapless individuals who met their doom had acquired bizarre and dangerous beliefs, which caused them to commit a fatal act.

At the risk of taking this depressing theme a stage further, jealous lovers have been known to commit what they consider to be hideous acts of revenge on someone they perceive to be pursuing their partner. If we knew that the recipient of the lover’s wrath was guilty, then the vengeance would make some kind of sense. If the recipient was actually entirely innocent, then superficially the injury inflicted upon him might seem puzzling. Why should he be the victim of an attack if he is innocent? The story begins to fall into place when we recognise that the explanation lies not in the reality of the person’s guilt or innocence, but in what the angry lover believes about the guilt or innocence.

One of the vital things we need to know about people is that their actions are governed not just by externally observable contingencies, but also by their beliefs. If we are to thrive and prosper in a social group, we need to be able to predict and explain the behaviour of those around us. Making accurate predictions depends on making accurate diagnoses of belief. On a more sophisticated but sinister level, we can say that anyone who is skilled in manipulating the content of other people’s beliefs is equipped to control the behaviour of others—perhaps to suit their own ends. This is, of course, the stuff of good literature. Shakespeare’s plays are full of the intrigue of the struggle for power over other people. The unprincipled characters in those stories wield their psychological skills to manipulate information to mislead others. This reveals not only a dark human skill, but also shows the intrigue we find in such machinations, given the continuing popularity of Shakespeare and his imitators over the centuries. Additionally, propaganda and commercial advertising campaigns are premised on the assumption that to influence the content of belief is to influence the overt behaviour. It might be possible to coerce people to behave in a certain way, but it is a good deal more satisfactory for the despot or profiteer if he can get people to behave in the same way whilst thinking that they are doing so out of their own volition!

In this context, it seems to make sense to say that an understanding that people hold beliefs should be a core criterion for judging whether or not an individual possesses an understanding of mind. The problem falls within the province of experimental psychology when we ask what kind of test would be appropriate for assessing this capacity. Suppose children witnessed a scene in which John le...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Understanding minds
• 2. Children’s pretence
• 3. Children’s awareness of mental phenomena
• 4. Children’s deception
• 5. Children’s early language and communication
• 6. Further developments in language and communication
• 7. Young children’s difficulty with false belief: A conceptual shift in the development of thinking?
• 8. The reality masking hypothesis: The idea of a smooth developmental progression
• 9. Psychopathology and the development of an understanding of mind
• 10. Communication and thinking: Autistic and normal development
• References
• Author index
• Subject index