Transcript

Have you ever wished you had the power to read minds? Well, you may not realize it, but in a way, you do, and there's no better way to realize it than by observing young children who are still developing these abilities and are not yet mind reading superheroes like the rest of us, these abilities are what neuroscientists call theory of mind, that is the ability to think about other people's beliefs and desires and to understand that they could be different from your own. You use this ability to make sense of or predict other people's behavior. Theory of mind is developed between the ages of three and six in typical children, this has been observed across cultures thanks to many different tests of varying difficulty. The easiest concept for children to grasp is the idea that two people can have different desires. Much harder for them is the concept that two people can have different beliefs.

This concept is what is tested in the most famous test of theory of mind, the Sally Anne task, which I will demonstrate in just a second. Not all children develop theory of mind at the same rate as you will see in this video, where two children, who are both five years and four months old, will perform differently. This is Sally. This is Anne. Sally has a basket. Anne has a box. Sally has a new ball. She decides to put her ball in her basket, and then she goes to play outside, where she won't be able to see or hear anything while Sally is outside, Anne takes Sally's ball out of the basket and puts it in her box instead. And then she goes to play outside. When Sally comes back, where will she look for the ball?