A Comprehensive Study of Theory of Mind Development Across Cultures

This essay explores the development of the theory of mind across different cultures, with a particular focus on the impact of the False Belief Task (FBT). It discusses how the theory of mind, which involves understanding others' mental states, is crucial for social interaction and predicting behavior. The essay examines how the FBT, which reveals children's assumptions about others' knowledge, affects the development of the theory of mind, particularly in the context of 'Weird' and 'Non-Weird' countries. It also highlights cross-cultural studies, including comparisons between German and Samoan children, and research in South Africa involving English, African, and Tswana cultures, to assess the universality of the theory of mind and the biases present in assessment tasks. The essay concludes by noting criticisms of the FBT and emphasizing the importance of considering cultural factors in understanding cognitive development. Desklib offers this essay and many other solved assignments for students.

DEVELOPMENT ACROSS
THE LIFESPAN

Table of Contents
DEVELOPMNET OF THEORY OF MIND ACROSS CULTURES............................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

DEVELOPMNET OF THEORY OF MIND ACROSS CULTURES
Theory of mind that includes making an understanding of other person mind would lead to
play an important role towards the raising of understanding about the world and others. However
as per the aspect of the False belief task a false assumption and understanding would be able to
get developed that may resist the theory of mind. This essay will discuss about the various aspect
of theory of mind and FBT in the context of culture, weird and non-weird countries and various
other.
The Theory of mind is that theory that is related with understating the mind of other
people by ascribing the mental state of them. This is one of the major theory that would assist in
making interaction and social relation among each other. This would enable the understanding
and predicting the behaviour and thinking of other (Dore and et.al., 2018). This is the ability
which is related with the attributes related with mental states i.e. desires, beliefs, emotions,
intents and various other. This will enable to make understand the other and their beliefs and
thinking. This would be right to states that with the aspect of theory of mind the mental state of
the other person and its belief would be able to get analysed and understood. This would play an
important role in case of making and understating of thinking related with the Weird and non-
Weird countries because of the persistence of different perceptions and beliefs. With this theory
the thinking and beliefs of the people would be able to get analysed and understood easily.
As per the False belief task it is being believed that the children would make an
assumption that their level of knowledge and understanding is high in comparison of the other
children. This is related with the theory of mind under which with the persistence of belief the
assumption would be made. This talks is related mainly associated with the child psychology
which states that they have a belief of knowing more and everything while making it compared
with the other children. For example, a box that may contain candies would be false believed by
the child that it contains pennies. In this task children that are about 3 years or younger would
say that it contains pennies but the older children would replied that it contain candies. This
shows that there is a persistence of false belief among the chid that they have known the
everything but in reality it is not. This task would restrain and play an important role with respect
to the theory of mind. False belief is the understanding about the world with certain assumption
but while making it contrast with the real world the situation is different. It is generally found in

children of younger age (Crivello and Poulin-Dubois, 2018). The results of the two experiments
would make differ from the reality and the actual facts.
The FTB task has a major impact towards the theory of mind because it will have debarred
from making it understand the thinking and perspective of other. As theory of mind is related
with the concept of making a understanding of the mind of other but with the aspect of FTB the
results of the theory of mind would be affected. Since the FTB tasks would lead to make a
creation of false assumption and result of the aspect that would lead to create a barrier in the
implementation of theory of mind. It would be right to states that the FTB task would restrict the
children to make the development of the theory of mind (Fenici, 2020). This would further lead
to have an impact towards the concept of Weird and Non-Weird countries because the FTB task
would not make capable the children that they can make understand the assumption and
perception of thinking of weird country people. This means with the concept of FTB the children
would be debarred from the theory of mind development because of the existence of the false
assumption. FTB will also lead to have an impact towards the understanding of the children.
The results of FTB may vary as well as implacable across various culture. As the result for
the False belief which enable the researcher to differentiate between the true belief of the child
with their awareness related to other's different belief which can be false for them. As the study
is suggested for applying the False belief task to the cross culture, the study is conduct for
analysing that the theory of min of the children developed synchronously across the different
culture (Wade and et.al 2018). As the success or result related to the false belief task is generally
interpreted as a main indicator for the children, such as their mental stage understanding, but the
inconsistency in such can led to develop the questions or queries regard to the child success and
failure interpretation. As on the basis of the assumption and reflection on the false belief task
inconsistency in cross culture, researcher argued on the using of true belief task more as it can
provide them a great advantage to differentiate between the various stages of the child reasoning.
FBT for the different weird and non weird countries can be as the true belief task and the
false belief task are differ in and were defined from the Samoan adult the interaction of the child.
As the study illustrated that the 40 Samoan child who are at the age between 5 to 7 years was
compared with the 40 children of the same age With the Germany country. In this assignment it
is concluded that the German children pass the both false belief and true belief test, while on the
other hand Samoan children did not pass the false belief task also did not proceed to apply their

level of chance to the true belief test. As per the researcher it is conveys that this is the first study
which involves the both true belief and false belief task within a cross cultural setting, the result
comes as to disclose the patterns based on the reasoning which are neither related to the
perceptual access study nor related to the false belief understanding (Zhu, Neubig and Bisk,
2021). As the result are differed in the cross cultural aspect as for the children in the Samoa fails
to answer both the task but on the other hand children in the Germany are pass in both the test, it
is the universality of the theory of mind as it is not a universal it mostly influenced by the society
and cultural factors. As the South Africa country suggested the study on the English, Africans
and On Tswana culture, as the participants from three different culture are tested on the basis of
three task which are the Faux pas, strange stories and the reading of the other's mind in the eyes.
From this study it stated that the result is not influenced by the culture on three of the tasks. It is
concluded from the hypothesis that the Theory of mind is universal in all the culture. As the
result also implies that the task aspects are more biased to the Non English culture. It is stated
that the neuropsychological abilities that are the intelligence and the other functions can be
similar or consistent in the cross culture (Fabricius and et.al 2021). But the majority of the tasks
having the biases on the basis of the racism. As the result concluded that the English children
who are white and also a native English speaker are good on the assessments but for the other
children from the different culture as Africans and Tswana are found less interactive than the
English children. As the Different skills and different language impact major on the assessment
as it shows the biases that the English participants are able to perform better in the test as
because they are the native English speaker (Rusch and et.al 2020).
The main criticism for the false belief task is that if the problem is more complex and
serious than the false belief task also inherently complex. It is because as every false belief task
required the main reason as the child's concern or rationale about the false belief, it is sometimes
also referred as the mind blindness, as the individual with the theory of mind face the major
difficulty to understand the other situation from other opinion as compare to their own.
As from the above study it is concluded that the theory of mind is universal across culture,
as it is also define the aspects for the false belief task. The study illustrated the False belief task
for the different culture, which can be seen as Samoan children fails in the test but the children
from the Germany passed the test. Also test by the South Africa suggests that the Test

functionality is biased for the English participants as they are Native English speaker which
makes them able to perform better as compared to the Africans participants.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Crivello, C. and Poulin-Dubois, D., 2018. Infants’ false belief understanding: A non-replication
of the helping task. Cognitive Development. 46. pp.51-57.
Dore, and et.al., 2018. Theory of mind: A hidden factor in reading comprehension?. Educational
Psychology Review. 30(3). pp.1067-1089.
Fabricius, W.V. and et.al 2021. Perceptual access reasoning (PAR) in developing a
representational theory of mind. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child
Development. 86(3). pp.7-154.
Fenici, M., 2020. How children approach the false belief test: Social development, pragmatics,
and the assembly of Theory of Mind. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, pp.1-
21.
Rusch, T. and et.al 2020. Theory of mind and decision science: towards a typology of tasks and
computational models. Neuropsychologia. 146. p.107488.
Wade, M. and et.al 2018. On the relation between theory of mind and executive functioning: A
developmental cognitive neuroscience perspective. Psychonomic Bulletin &
Review. 25(6). pp.2119-2140.
Zhu, H., Neubig, G. and Bisk, Y., 2021, July. Few-shot language coordination by modeling
theory of mind. In International Conference on Machine Learning (pp. 12901-12911).
PMLR.
Online references
A, B., 2018. [Online]. Available through <>
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