Theory of Mind

Almost a month ago, rivka posted a snapshot of how her daughter Alex is getting along, developmentally. In that post, she made a passing reference to Alex not yet showing a "theory of mind," complete mit link.

Clearly, if it's been this long and I'm only just mentioning it I'm a lazy git it's been percolating in my own mind for a while. And I'm tentatively coming 'round to the idea that this is a very big deal, one which touches on what I'm increasingly observing as the most difficult thing people do: Put themselves in the shoes of another.

What's a theory of mind? Here's what Mr. Eslea says, on that previously linked page:

"The development of mental representations of objects, and the subsequent development of the ability to manipulate them, has been well described by Piaget and others, and is not particularly controversial. However, what is controversial is the question to what extent other people are perceived in the same way as objects are. In very early childhood, we can imagine that the parent is simply another object, passing in and out of existence as it appears and disappears from view. This would explain the apparent pleasure with which young babies respond to games of "peek-a-boo". Gradually, the child comes to realise that the people around it, like objects, have an independent existence that continues when they are out of sight. Gradually, they begin to form mental representations of people, and gradually they become able to manipulate these representations just as they can those of objects, first in a concrete way and later more abstractly. There is, however, one key difference between people and objects: people have consciousness. Somewhere along the line, children learn that other people have thoughts, intentions, feelings and beliefs, which may or may not be the same as their own." {emphasis added by me at the end}

Further, a theory of mind (or "TOM", for an acronym), "...is something that all people must develop in order to understand the minds of other people."

So why do I consider this a big deal? Easy. Far from being universal, I think this is something that is actually fairly rare.

Eslea goes on to give this example:

"It seems reasonable to assume that children cannot comprehend the desires or emotions of others unless they are aware of their own, and it certainly seems to be true that TOM develops alongside self-awareness (the development of self is covered in a separate lecture). First, children learn to recognise themselves (from around 18 months), then to express their emotional states (from about two years). Then, they must make the distinction between self and other. Here's an example from a telephone conversation with a three year-old boy:

(Me) What have you been doing today?
(Him) Playing with this.
(Me) Oh, right. What is it?
(Him) THIS!!!

It is quite common for children at this age to fail to realise that other people cannot necessarily see what they can see (and vice versa: I have often seen children "hide" by covering their eyes. If they can't see themselves, neither can you!)."

Of course I cannot be certain, but I'll bet every single one of you who have worked in technical support smiled while reading that transcript. Because when you're in telephone support, you'll invariably have that conversation sometime.

But it's not just the end users who fail at making this distinction. Many is the time I've heard co-workers flounder as they stumble upon not explaining their own screen to a customer. Or who, when the customer can't see what's right there in front of the agent, dismiss the customer as an "idiot."

And it's not just the narrow scope of tech support situations. I've seen relationships founder on this ("Why can't she see things my way?"); political discussions grind themselves to a halt; business negotiations run into a brick wall; you name it. Think of the vapor lock between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Eslea goes on to posit that children who don't develop a TOM, in the most extreme cases, become autistic. But he doesn't appear to speculate at all about what I've observed to be the much larger sample -- people who either almost develop a TOM, or are only willing to extend it to family/tribe/clan.

I don't have a thundering conclusion to wrap this up with. But I thought others may (or may not ;) be interested.