So in the grand scheme of things, we've really been talking about how a human comes to perceive the world and now we've included themselves as well in the last lecture, this notion of self. And now I want to extend it one more step, which is really our ability to perceive others and not just to perceive others, but to perceive what others perceive. This is going to be a little hard on the head sometimes, but that concept is called theory of mind and it i's really this notion that we can mentally put ourselves in somebody else's place and have a sense of what they're feeling and it's really a critical thing for social behavior. It's one of these things we call prosocial, the extent we can understand each other and behave in accordance with that understanding. That should help us to be a sort of stronger knit social group. So it's a very critical ability for any organism that lives in large social units, which clearly humans do. So, let's talk about how it develops. So we've got two brains, Week Three: Lecture Eight, Theory of Mind. Have two brains here. I don't know, they kind of look like they're on firecrackers or something. I'm not sure what that is underneath them, but the idea is this really is about one person's mind getting a sense of what's on somebody else's mind. So, here's the basic idea. Some people talk first order, second order, third order and what they mean is we all have a sense of ourself. That's kind of where we left off. So, we can imagine these two individuals. Let's call them Mr. Green and Ms. Blue, both having a sense of themselves and who they are. What they think, what they feel. However, when we talk about second order consciousness, we will talk about, well, Mr. Green might not only have a sense of what he's feeling and what he's thinking, but he may also have a sense of what Ms. Blue is thinking or feeling. So the ideas that we literally generate some sort of internal model, some sort of internal simulation that we think captures what somebody else thinks or feels. And of course, the more that we're around that person, the better this model is. The better we'd be able to predict how they might act in a certain situation, for example. Now, it goes beyond that third order. Now, we have here Mr. Green having a model of what Mrs. Blue is thinking about Mr. Green. So you can literally, we can say things like, I know what you think I'm thinking. Very convoluted phrase when you kind of unpack that, but I know what you think I'm thinking. The idea is I can model you modeling me and it really does kind of get convoluted that way. But when we're trying to surprise somebody, for example. Let's say, it's Valentine's Day and we want to do something that our partner really finds surprising and sweet, because of the thought that went into it. Well, sometimes what that thought is is literally not doing what they would expect you to do. So they have a model of you and that model predicts that you're going to predict in certain ways and sometimes it's considered, especially cute, thoughtful, etc. If you behave in a way that, I guess even more sweet or more romantic than this person expected you to on Valentine's Day. So, that's an example of how this can all play out in the real world. Now, the really kind of interesting thing about theory of mind is there was a lot of studies done on this with children and here's how the studies would work. They would use something called the false belief test. So they would have a box of crayons and they would begin by asking the child, and let's say about a three year old child. They would ask the child, what do you think is in this box of crayons? And the child would not surprisingly, typically say, well, crayons. But then the person would open the box and show them something else and in most of the experiments, it's candles. Then in fact, there's candles in the crayon box. And so then they close the crayon box again and then they say, okay, now what do you think is in the crayon box? And the child says, candles, because they just saw that. At this point, you bring up Snoopy who's been under the table. And you tell the child, okay, Snoopy hasn't heard anything we've been talking about. What do you think Snoopy will think is in the box of crayons? And for children three years of age and younger, they almost always will answer, candles. Snoopy will think there's candles. They seem to think that whatever they know, everybody around them knows. So when they know there are candles in there and not crayons, then that's what Snoopy will think too and that's what everybody will think. So, children three years of age and younger have a real difficulty with the concept that what I know maybe different from what somebody else knows and that's the real basis of this theory of mine. That you eventually have to be able to model what other people know, these children cannot do it. Somewhere between the ages of three and five, they gain this skill. You can ask them that question again and they can do it. So, right around that age is where they seem to develop the ability to model the minds of others. And remember, it was much younger than that when they got their sense of themselves, a model of themselves. That we said was about a year and a half to two years, somewhere in that range, they have a sense of themselves. But even then, it takes them still another year or more to start to realize that their egocentric view of the world is not shared by everybody else. kind of cool. Now of course, this is really critical. I mentioned this notion of prosocial behaviors that anytime you have a lot of humans living together, it really helps if humans help one another. And a lot of people think this theory of mind is the basis of that, especially via empathy. That this child here, you see is helping or aiding or comforting this crying child. Why would you comfort a crying child? Well, because she can feel the sorrow. And because she feels the sorrow and can share in that emotional state, then she wants to help the child just as she would like someone to help her if she were in that state. So, we have this concept of a Good Samaritan. Somebody who helps others when they don't really have to. And yet, they do it any way. And really, what is thought to underlie that is the fact that we can share in their pain. We can share in their feelings. In fact, some theories say, we cannot help, but share in the feeling. So, imagine a situation like the following. Imagine somebody was knocking at your door and you had a bunch of young children in the house with you and they're knocking at the door and saying, I don't know where, but somewhere out here there's this wild animal. Let's say, a wild bear and it's attacking everything in sight and it could be anywhere here. You have to open the door and let me in. Now you know if you open the door and let that person in, there is a chance that the bear could get in. And if the bear gets in, your whole family could be at risk. And yet, it's very hard to leave the person out there and say, no, I don't want to take the risk. Why? Because you can hear their fear, you feel their fear and perhaps, the only way for you to feel good, for you to feel peace is for that person to feel good and for that person to feel peace. So if you will let them in and close the door, now you can all feel a little bit better. And so it may be that theory of mind and that the empathy it provides drives us to perform pro social acts. And thereby, holds us together as a species or at least goes against some of our anti social tendencies, so that at least we have that combination. Now, this isn't uniquely human. There are a lot of studies with animals as well, that suggest that they also have a theory of mind. There's some funny ones, you can probably find on YouTube. Here's one that I remember, that's quite funny. There's a chimp and a couple of experimenters. And one of the experimenters loves a certain kind of chocolate, let's say, Smarties, loves Smarties. And she's there looking at her Smarties and saying, I can't wait to have these Smarties later, but I'm going to put them in this box for now. And so, she puts them in this box and leaves the room. At that point, the other experimenter takes the smarties out of the box and moves them to another locations. So, hides the smarties in another location and the chimp sees all this. Now the first experimenter comes back in the room and says, I'm hungry. I want my Smarties and she goes towards the box where she had put the Smarties, but the chimp knows the Smarties are not there anymore. And as she approaches the box, the chimp is laughing and smiling and thinking this is the funniest thing in the world, because he knows when she looks the Smarties will be gone. So there are a bunch of experiments like that. I got a bunch, I'll link to one that's a little different, but similar idea and a lot of these suggest at least to some people that animals also have theory of mind. Although as this book by Robert Lurch shows is debated and it's pretty hotly debated. But if you're interested in that debate, check this out. It's a good book on that issue. But most of the evidence and all, but most skeptical researchers will agree that at least some animals and maybe many animals are also able to read the minds of others and to feel empathy and to produce prosocial behavior as a response. One other thing I want to connect this to, there's some notion that children with Autism or Aspergers may have real deficits with theory of mind and it's not completely sure why it is. It may be to do with the complexity of the signals that we use to communicate our internal states to each other. We spoke of this a little bit before. The idea that we use language, but we also use all these subtle shifts our muscles and facial muscles and such and all of that matters. Well, to many autistic kids, that's a very complex stimulus with all kinds of interacting parts and it overwhelms them. And so they have trouble processing social stimuli, because of their complexity. And as a result, they do not gain this ability to really model somebody else's mind. And if you do, if you lose that ability, then these are the sorts of things, the problems you have. And this shows the importance of this ability, difficult explaining ones own behaviors, difficulty understanding emotions etc. All of these things are critical and Theory of Mind gives us these things, but it's really difficult if a child does not have it. There are strategies you can try to use with these children to help them develop Theory of Mind, but it is a real challenge. Whereas for many children, it just comes naturally between three and five. So, kind of another fascinating aspect. So, what I've got here is a few links. Check out this false beliefs test. You can actually see some children experiencing this and get a sense of how they react. Here's a short talk by Robert Sapolsky about Theory of Mind in Chimpanzees. But you'll see if you follow this talk, there's links to all sorts of other animal videos related to that and this is a larger TED talk by Sax. That kind of gives an overview of Theory of Mind and why it's important of for humans and a couple of readings. One, generally, on Theory of Mind and these are both relatively short. The second one really linking to that autism issue. So if you're curious about that, check that out. That's it for week three. We've had kind of a long path of thinking about the way our mind deals with all this information. We focused primarily on visual information. But of course, the brain is doing this with all of the stimulation it's receiving. Ultimately, trying to understand the world around it and the people within it with whom we interact. So, were going to now move on to talking about things like memory and learning next week. But for now, that's all and I hope you have a great day, evening, whatever it may be, wherever you are. Thanks. Bye, bye.
