Browsing by Subject "Theory of mind"

Now showing 1 - 18 of 18

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Bystander responses in five-steps: paving road to prosocial intervention to social exclusion through social-cognition
(Wiley, 2024-11-01) Ayhan, Serengeti; Gönültaş, Seçil
To promote prosocial defending behaviours to social exclusion, it is important to understand the role of social-cognitive factors in bystanders' cognition, judgements and responses. The current research examined how social cognitive skills relate to different aspects of bystanders' cognition, judgements and responses in the five-step intervention model. Data were collected from 96 Turkish children and adolescents (Mage = 12.39 years, SD = 1.74, 59 girls, aged 10-17). Participants were presented with a hypothetical social exclusion scenario and their bystanders' cognition, judgements and responses were measured via five-step intervention model. Theory of mind (ToM), mind-reading motivation (MRM) and empathy were also measured as predictors. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that while ToM and MRM were more likely to predict bystanders' judgements and cognitions around social exclusion, empathy was also found to be correlated with behavioural aspects of bystanders' responses beside cognitions and judgements. Overall, our novel findings provide insight for intervention studies to promote prosocial bystanders' judgements, cognitions and responses by addressing different social-cognitive skills.
Open Access
(Co-)Constructing a theory of mind: from language or through language?
(Springer, 2020) Ilgaz, Hande; Allen, Jedediah W. P.
There is a large body of empirical work that has investigated the relationship between parents’ child-directed speech and their children’s Theory of Mind development. That such a relationship should exist is well motivated from both Theory Theory and Socio-Cultural (SC) perspectives. Despite this general convergence, we argue that theoretical differences between the two perspectives suggests nuanced differences in the expected outcomes of the empirical work. Further, the different ontological commitments of the two approaches have (mis)guided the design, coding, and analysis of existing research and imply different future directions. We discuss five areas of extant research that can be extended and diversified most coherently by adopting a SC framework.
Open Access
Cultural affordances: Does model reliability affect over-imitation in preschoolers
(Elsevier Ltd, 2021-03) Jedediah W.P., Allen; Sümer, Cansu; Ilgaz, Hande
One general perspective on why children over-imitate is that they are learning about the normatively correct way of doing things. If correct, then characteristics of the demonstrator should be relevant. Accordingly, the current study aimed to investigate how the reliability of an adult model influences children’s selectivity of what to imitate in an over-imitation situation (i.e., when some of the actions are causally irrelevant). Seventy-eight preschoolers between 3 and 6 years of age participated at school or in the lab on four tasks. A canonical trust paradigm was used to manipulate model reliability in terms of past accuracy. Children then watched either the reliable or unreliable model open a transparent box using the same relevant and irrelevant actions. In addition, children completed a standard ToM battery. Results indicated that children were more likely to over-imitate from a demonstration given by the reliable versus unreliable model. Children’s ToM abilities were not related to their over-imitation behavior but showed some relations to their trust performance. Overall, the results provide support for a social situational approach to over-imitation that fits most closely with the norm learning perspective.
Open Access
Culturally constituted universals: evidential basis of belief matters
(John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2023-03-16) Haskaraca, F. N.; Ilgaz, Hande; Bortfeld, H.; Haan, Michelle de; Messinger, D.
Differences in the sequence with which children pass the tasks in Wellman and Liu's (2004) theory of mind (ToM) battery is increasingly bringing into question the universal and cultural specifics of children's developing understanding of others' minds. Children from China, Iran, and Turkey pass the knowledge access (KA) task of the battery earlier than they pass the diverse beliefs (DB) task (e.g., Selcuk et al., 2018). This pattern is the reverse of what has been documented with children from Australia and the US (e.g., Peterson et al., 2005). This paper presents three studies with Turkish samples that explore the possible reasons for developmental sequence and performance differences in the ToM battery. Study 1 investigated Turkish-speaking adults' judgments of appropriateness for different epistemic verbs as used in the DB and false belief (FB) tasks. Study 2 investigated whether adults' performance (i.e., accuracy, reaction time) on FB tasks were affected by culturally preferred uses of these verbs. Collectively these studies showed that adults found different epistemic language (“guess,” “think,” and the Turkish-specific “falsely think”) to be appropriate for different belief-based tasks. However, there was no difference in adults' performance based on epistemic language. In Study 3, Turkish-speaking preschoolers' performance in belief-related tasks based on variations in epistemic language and epistemic features (i.e., presence of evidence) was investigated. Among five modifications, Turkish children benefited only from a modification that involved the manipulation of the epistemological basis for ambiguous beliefs (i.e., visual evidence for belief).
Open Access
Detailed investigation of the relation between mothers’ mental state language and children's theory of mind abilities
(2022-07) Evsen, Setenay
This study investigated the relation between maternal mental state language (MSL) in a storytelling context and preschoolers’ Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities. Seventy-four Turkish-speaking mothers’ mental state discourse was examined with a comprehensive coding of mental content (i.e., perception, physiological, desire, motivation, emotion, and cognition) at both lexical and morphological levels by marking the referents of each mental use (i.e., child-mother vs. story character). In addition, to distinguish the uses of perception terms as attention getters or genuine mental state references, a coding for perception words in terms of function was included. The results revealed that only certain functions of mothers’ perception MSL was related to children’s ToM performance. In particular, mothers’ use of perception MSL to give the literal meaning of the terms predicted children’s ToM performance concurrently when children’s cognitive abilities and age was controlled for. Results were discussed from a socio-cultural perspective to emphasize the importance of coding the pragmatic aspects of maternal MSL for a better understanding of ToM development in relation to language.
Open Access
Detailed investigation of Turkish children’s diverse belief task performance
(2022-12) Öztürk Mıhcı, İrem
This study investigated Turkish children’s Diverse Belief (DB) task performance, which is one of the tasks in Theory of Mind (ToM) battery. Previous literature found that Turkish children underperformed on the DB task when compared to children from other cultures. In addition, Turkish children did not show the expected age-related increase in the DB task performance, and Turkish children’s DB performance was not related to the other ToM tasks and cognitive variables such as EF. Therefore, the aim was to examine whether the difficulty in the DB task is related to the task structure for Turkish children. The DB task performances and the EF skills of 45 Turkish-speaking children aged between 3 and 5 were assessed. The DB task was manipulated in terms of mental state verbs (e.g., think, guess, and no mental states) and the number of characters in the story (e.g., single, and double seekers). Results showed that Turkish children were not affected by the differences in mental state verbs, but the number of characters in the story affected performance. Children were more successful in the double-seeker conditions when the task was presented with the verb “think” (düşün- in Turkish). In the light of these results, it is possible to infer that the problems regarding Turkish children’s DB performance may be related to the curse of belief rather than Turkish children’s conceptual deficiency in belief understanding.
Open Access
Development and use of theory of mind in social and cultural context
(The Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), 2022-12-15) Selçuk, Bilge; Gönültaş, Seçil; Ekerim-Akbulut, Müge
Theory of mind (ToM) is a key social-cognitive skill that allows individuals to understand and attribute mental states to others; it facilitates relationships and helps individuals navigate the social world. Thus, it is likely influenced by social and cultural contexts. In this article, we review studies that examine the potential ways through which sociocultural context interacts with the development and use of ToM in Western and non-Western societies. First, we summarize findings documenting the link between culture and timing of ToM acquisition. Second, we examine cross-cultural studies on how culture can be related to the sequential development of different dimensions of ToM. Third, we discuss when and how cultural group membership of the targets influences the use of ToM. Finally, we suggest avenues for research so the field can understand more comprehensively the dynamic interactions between sociocultural context and the development and use of ToM.
Open Access
The development of preschoolers’ understanding of culpability
(2020-06) Alimujiang, Reyihanguli
The effect of outcome and intention on children’s moral judgment is much debated in developmental literature. Combining this debate with norm understanding literature we investigated children’s ability to understand intentions and norm violators’ culpability in a given situation. 4-year-olds were randomly assigned to two different groups that involve a puppet either intentionally violates a norm or violates the norm based on a false belief. Further, we investigated other sociocognitive abilities that may influence children’s understanding of intentions and culpability. Theory of mind Battery (Wellman & Liu, 2004), Change in location False Belief Task (Wimmer & Perner, 1983) and standard Executive Functions task (Zelazo, 2006) are tested in each participant. Regarding protest behavior during transgression and tattling behavior after transgression as salient markers of children’s understanding of intention and culpability, the result shows that children tattle more when a norm violation is done with an intention to violate the rule as compared to the same norm violation that is done based on a false belief about the situation. In other words, 4 year-olds do understand intentions and decide transgressors culpability by incorporating the mental state of the transgressor. Moreover, children who could not pass the explicit false belief tasks show the same pattern in tattling while the ones who passed at least one of the explicit false belief tasks show no difference in tattling among conditions. Taken together, 4-year-olds understand and comprehend intention information especially when they do not have explicit false belief understanding.
Open Access
The development of trust judgements about lie-tellers during middle childhood
(2021-06) Bahar, Aslı Yasemin
This thesis investigates children's trust evaluations for lie-tellers across three ages (7-,9-, and 11-year-olds) and a number of social situations. A total of 145 primary school children were tested on a Lie-Telling Evaluation Task (LET), created by the researchers, and classical interpretive ToM tasks. Lie-Telling Evaluation Task (LET) included eight short stories in which the protagonist lied. Half of the stories involved a culturally-appropriate lie, whereas the other half showcased a self-oriented lie: The participants were asked to rate their reliability and emotional trust towards the protagonist. Parents' general parenting styles and lie-telling behavior towards their children for instrumental purposes during preschool was investigated. The analysis focused on children's trust evaluations on three lie scenarios: avoiding punishment, avoiding shame, and being polite. Results indicated that children reported all lie-tellers as untrustworthy, yet lie scenario had a significant effect on trust judgements. There was also an interaction of lie scenario and age such that children's trust evaluations for a protagonist lying to avoid punishment and to be polite decreased with age while children's trust evaluations for a protagonist lying to avoid shame increased. Children' s total ToM abilities, parenting styles and parents' instrumental use of threat lies were not related to children's trust for the above three scenarios. However, parents' instrumental use of threat lies towards their children indirectly affected the influence of children's overall ToM performance on their trust evaluations for lie-tellers lying to avoid punishment.
Open Access
Do adolescents intervene in intergroup bias-based bullying? Bystander judgments and responses to intergroup bias-based bullying of refugees
(Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc., 2022-04-03) Gönültaş, Seçil; Mulvey, Kelly Lynn
This study examined 587 Turkish adolescents’ (Mage = 13.14, SD = 1.61) judgments and bystander responses towards hypothetical intragroup interpersonal (Turkish victim) and intergroup bias-based (Syrian refugee victim) bullying. Intergroup factors and social-cognitive skills were assessed as predictors. Findings revealed that adolescents were less likely to see bullying as acceptable and less likely to explicitly support the bully in intragroup interpersonal bullying compared to intergroup bias-based bullying. Further, adolescents with higher theory of mind and empathy were more likely to evaluate intergroup bias-based bullying as less acceptable and more likely to challenge the bully. Adolescents’ prejudice and discrimination towards refugees were predictors of bystander judgments and responses to intergroup bias-based bullying. This study provides implications for anti-bullying intervention programs.
Open Access
The effect of maternal mental state talk on preschool children’s theory of mind abilities
(2016-05) Bozbıyık, Bahar
This study investigates the relation between maternal mental state expressions during story book reading and 3- to 5-year-old Turkish speaking children’s theory of mind (ToM) abilities. Thirty-two children completed ToM, executive functions, and standardized language tasks. Following these, parents read a wordless picture book to their children. Mothers’ mental state languages were coded in 3 levels of structural complexity: the word, the morphological, and the clause levels. At the word level we coded for the frequency and the diversity of mental state words (i.e., perception, physiological states, motivation/intention, desire, affect, cognitive, contrastive). At the morphological level we coded for modality for volitional wishes (-se, -sa) and modality for volitional suggestions (-e, -a). Mental state words with their subcategories were coded in accordance with their referents: (1) the child, the mother, or others (MSW-CMO) (2) story characters (MSW-SC). At the sentence level we coded for mental state causal explanations under two categories: (1) Explicit explanations and (2) Implicit Explanations. Results revealed that mothers’ total MSW was related to children’s ToM after controlling for strong predictors. Additionally, frequency of total MSW-CMO, cognitive-CMO, perception-CMO, perception-SC, and total perception word uses were correlated with children’s ToM. Furthermore, while cognitive words positively predicted children’ ToM, explanations for cognitive words negatively predicted children’s ToM. In line with correlational results that emphasize the role of perception words, an analysis that investigated the effects of perception, cognitive, and contrastive words found that the aggregate frequency of these categories predicted children’ ToM. Lastly, only mothers’ cognitive-CMO predicted children’s ToM.
Open Access
The origins of mindreading: how interpretive socio-cognitive practices get off the ground
(Springer, 2020) Fenici, Marco; Zawidzki, T. W.
Recent accounts of mindreading—i.e., the human capacity to attribute mental states to interpret, explain, and predict behavior—have suggested that it has evolved through cultural rather than biological evolution. Although these accounts describe the role of culture in the ontogenetic development of mindreading, they neglect the question of the cultural origins of mindreading in human prehistory. We discuss four possible models of this, distinguished by the role they posit for culture: (1) the standard evolutionary psychology model (Carruthers), (2) the individualist empiricist model (Wellman, Gopnik), (3) the cultural empiricist model (Heyes), and (4) the radical socio-cultural constructivist model, which we favor. We motivate model (4) by arguing that many forms of mental state ascription do not serve the function of simply describing inner states causally responsible for the behavior of a cognitive agent; rather, they relate the agent to her environment by characterizing her practical commitments. Making these practical commitments explicit has an important regulatory function in that it supports action coordination and alignment on joint goals. We propose a model of how the ascription of mental states may have evolved as a linguistic device to perform exactly this function of making agents’ practical commitments explicit.
Open Access
Self/other differentiation based on present VS past tense cues in Turkish culture
(2021-07) Çelik, Salih Bartuğ
The literature provides various studies that showed human beings’ implicit awareness of their own and others’ mental states (i.e., implicit Theory of Mind, ToM abilities). However, how much these implicit processes are qualitatively different from the explicit ToM abilities is an open question to investigate. To explore this issue, Bradford et al. (2015; 2018) conducted a study that showed it was easier for adults to adopt “self” perspectives than “other” perspectives. Importantly, participants found shifting from other- to self-oriented perspectives easier than shifting from self- to other. Bradford et al. concluded that self-oriented mental states might be automatically processed when thinking about others but that other-oriented mental state attribution requires consciously controlled processes. In the current study, we explored whether the task demands from Bradford et al.’s study affect participants’ performances across shifting conditions. Self-oriented perspectives might be always processed faster than other-oriented perspectives because they might include more concrete cues (e.g., past and personal experiences). To provide more concrete cues for the other-oriented perspective questions, participants were presented with Bradford et al.’s paradigm using the Turkish past-tense with the direct evidential marker, -DI. This manipulation allowed investigating whether other-oriented perspectives could be processed as fast as self-oriented perspectives. In order to also investigate the impact of cultural factors on the participants’ performances, an Individuals-Collectivism survey was included. The results of the study showed similar findings with Bradford et al. (2015; 2018) in that participants more easily shifted from other- to self-oriented perspectives compared to self- to other-oriented perspectives. The results were discussed based on the current approaches (i.e., lean, middle-ground, and rich accounts) to social cognition.
Open Access
The effect of reality-distancing on children’s false belief understanding
(2023-07) Tuğlacı, Ece
The socio-cultural theory has emphasized the effect of the co-constitutive nature of the narrative discourse on FB understanding, whereas simulation theory asserted that imagination is a cognitive ability that scaffolds perspective-taking which underlies children’s developing abilities to understand FBs. Elements of fantasy have been indiscriminately used in correlational and intervention studies that examined the factors that affect children’s understanding of FBs. However, there are two evidence-based reasons to expect that children would benefit from fantasy elements (i.e., increased levels of engagement and reality-distancing inherent in fantastical media contexts). The current project aims to examine the effects of varying degrees of fantasy on false belief (FB) tasks. To do so, the present studies utilize FB tasks (i.e., contents FB and change of location) in which children are presented with FB tasks that include fantastical and realistic characters as protagonists within fantastical and realistic settings, respectively. Study 1 tested the effects of the degree of fantasy and the order of receiving manipulations. The increasing degree of fantasy increased preschoolers' performance on FB tasks. Study 2 explored the same effects with a more targeted sample using an additional fantasy-orientation measure. The results replicate the effect of the degree of fantasy and suggest encountering fantastical content before realistic content selectively scaffolds younger children's performance on FB tasks. This is despite their lack of orientation toward enjoying fantastical content. Thus, the discussion of the findings and future studies emphasizes the significance of reality-distancing provided by the fantastical content included in FB tasks.
Open Access
Turkish as a grammaticalized language: the effect of factivity alternation and certainty on theory of mind understanding
(2021-07) Balcı, Amine Serra
The majority of studies investigating the relation between language and socio-cognitive understanding have been designed for and carried out with participants from Western cultures (Milligan et al., 2007). Recently, there is emerging interest in studying the relation between cultural-linguistic nuances and social understanding (Choi, 2006; Matsui, Yamamoto & McCagg, 2006). Many linguistic features found in languages such as Japanese, Korean, or Turkish are integral to the syntactic complexity of these languages and express epistemic stances towards reality or others’ propositions. The current thesis included two studies investigating adult native Turkish speakers’ sensitivity to the certainty of propositions based on grammatical structure and whether their sensitivity is related to their theory of mind abilities. The results showed that Turkish speakers are sensitive to (a) factivity alternation, meaning they display different levels of epistemic certainty based on the grammatical framing of the verb to know (Studies 1 & 2) (b) morphological certainty markers (Study 2). However, participants’ sensitivity to epistemic certainty was unrelated to ToM abilities as assessed by the Faux Pas task (Study 1 & 2), and epistemic bias as assessed by the Contamination Task (Study 1). The results are discussed with their implications, especially for future work with younger samples.
Open Access
Turkish mothers’ use of complement clauses in storytelling in relation to children’s comprehension of complement clauses and theory of mind abilities
(2022-04) Bodur, Esin
This study investigates mothers’ use of complement clauses in relation to children’s comprehension of complement clauses and theory of mind among 3-to 5-year-old Turkish speaking children. 114 children were given comprehension of complement clauses task, expressive and receptive language tasks, and three ToM tasks. Wordless storybook was used to collect maternal language data during storytelling. Three forms of complement clause structures (nonfinite, finite, and bare finite) were analyzed. Three complement clause structures were analyzed in two main categories. The categories were classified according to their inclusion of mental state verbs (i.e., physiological, desire, motivation, emotion, and cognitive) and nonmental state verbs. Three mental state combinations (MSCs) were also classified according to their use of mental state verb as main verb or complement verb in three complement clause structures. In first MSC, the complement verb is mental state verb. In second MSC, main verb and complement verb are mental state verbs. In third MSC, main verb is mental state verb. The results showed that the frequency of complement clause structures was not significantly related to children’s comprehension of complement clauses. Mothers’ use of third MSC in nonfinite complement clauses was significantly related to children’s comprehension of double complement clauses and their receptive language. The frequency of complement clauses that include mental state verbs was not significantly related to ToM. Children’s comprehension of double complement clauses was significantly related to ToM whereas the correlation was not significant after controlling for children’s expressive and receptive language.
Open Access
Turkish speakers' conceptualization of belief-related words and its implications for theory of mind development
(2019-05) Haskaraca, Feride Nur
This thesis is comprised of three studies. Study 1 & 2 investigate whether there are pragmatic nuances between belief-related mental state verbs (e.g., “to think, guess, and falsely think”) acknowledged by Turkish-speaking adults, and whether Turkish adults’ implicit processing of the belief-including situations such as false belief tasks are affected by the appropriate (vs. inappropriate) use of mental state verbs. Study 3 investigates whether Turkish-speaking preschooler’s performance in belief-related tasks of Theory of Mind (ToM) Battery [Diverse Belief (DB) and False Belief (FB) tasks, devised by Wellman & Liu, 2004] is affected by the verb used in these tasks. In Study 1, 150 Turkish-speaking adults completed an online survey asking for their judgments of appropriateness regarding the use of mental state words in belief tasks. In Study 2, 61 Turkish-speaking adults’ accuracy rates and reaction times in response to interchangeable use of mental state verbs (MSVs) in FB tasks were investigated. In Study 3, 60 Turkish-speaking children were tested on both the original ToM Battery and on the pragmatically modified versions of the DB and FB tasks. The DB and FB tasks were modified by either a) replacing the MSV used in the task (i.e., “think”) with a pragmatically and semantically more appropriate one (e.g., “guess” or “falsely think”); or, b) changing the epistemological circumstances of the task by adding an evidential basis for the belief so that the MSV used in the task (i.e., “think”) would be in line with the pragmatics of Turkish. Results revealed that Turkish-speaking children benefited from one modification that did not involve a manipulation of MSVs but the epistemological circumstances of the MSV (i.e., DB task presented with evidence).
Open Access
What’s the evidence say? The relation between evidential-trust and theory of mind
(Psychology Press, 2023-09-24) Çelik, Bartuğ; Ergut, Nice; Allen, Jedediah W.P.
Previous research has shown that linguistic cues such as mental and modal verbs can influence young children’s judgments about the reliability of informants. Further, certain languages include grammatical morphemes (i.e. evidential markers), which clarify the source of information coming from testimony (e.g., Bulgarian, Japanese, Turkish). Accordingly, the first aim of the current study is to examine whether Turkish-speaking children’s reliability judgments change based on evidential markers (i.e. the past-tense direct evidential marker, –DI, and the past-tense indirect evidential marker, –mIş). The literature has also investigated whether selective trust abilities are related to understanding the epistemic states of others (i.e., Theory of Mind). Therefore, the second aim is to examine the relation between selective trust based on evidential markers and ToM abilities by including a comprehensive ToM battery. Eighty-six Turkish-speaking preschool and elementary school children between the ages of 4 and 7, residing in a metropolitan city in Turkey, participated in a selective trust task based on evidential markers, a general language task, and a ToM battery. The results of the current study showed that after the age of 6, Turkish-speaking children start to selectively trust the informant using the past-tense direct evidential marker, –DI, over the past-tense indirect evidential marker, –mIş. Selective trust performance was related to receptive vocabulary but not to ToM abilities after controlling for participant gender and age. Overall, the results contribute to current discussions about children’s selective trust ability based on linguistic cues and its relation with ToM.