The Power of Dolls

For those who have never heard of this test, its to detect a child’s ability to understand false beliefs. Passing this test is usually synonymous with having a Theory of Mind.

The test begins by telling a child the story:

There are two dolls, Sally and Anne. Sally has a basket and Anne has a box. Sally puts a marble in her basket and then leave the room and can no longer see the basket. Anne takes the marble out of Sally’s basket and puts it in her box. Sally comes back into the room, where should she look for her marble?

The correct answer would be that Sally should look for her marble in her basket because that is where she left and and does not know that Anne moved it. One hundred percent of normally developing children can correctly answer this test, while those who are most affected are children with Autism, for they can only answer this test correctly 20% of the time. Children with down syndrome pass this test with almost equal accuracy as normally developing children. When a child reaches the age at which they can pass the test, usually 4, they are deemed to have a theory of mind. Theory of mind is when an individual can understand that they and others can have ideas and beliefs that are not reflective of reality. This has been such an influential test partially due to the fact that it is so simple yet assesses such a complex phenomenon. Theory of mind is currently attributed as a phenomenon experienced exclusively by humans. Researchers have administered this test to Chimpanzees and they are unable to select the correct answer which has led us, to decide that they do not have a theory of mind. A key result of the study that first utilized this test compared children with Down Syndrome to autistic children, to normal children emphasized that this ability to infer other’s thoughts and understand that they might be different from your own, may be independent from intelligence. The researchers were able to infer this because the children with Down Syndrome passed this test and they exhibit intellectual disability often to the same degree as autistic children.

I find this test so interesting because when I first learnt about it in my developmental psychopathology class, I could not understand how anyone could fail this test, it seemed so simple, fail-proof in its conception, which led me to realize that we take our ability to understand that others could think differently from ourselves for granted. We use this fundamental ability on a daily basis and are never specifically taught how to exert this type of thinking. Thus I think that we need to be more mindful when interacting with others, for it might be prudent to consider that not everyone we meet will have this specific ability. Understanding this, might better our communication with others.

Reference:

Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (October 01, 1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind” ?. Cognition, 21, 1, 37–46.