Williams James is an American philosopher who ventured a lot in the field of psychology and science in general. He is famous out of his effort to understand and explain the “theory of mind” in a more precise way. The “theory of mind” is a critical doctrine that seeks to understand the cognitive abilities of different people. For example, it focuses on how well an individual can infer the thoughts of a person and tell what that particular person is thinking. Therefore, the paper illustrates the theoretical assumptions and some of the empirical evidence concerning the “theory of mind”. It also explains some of the implications of the theory in the establishment of justice and equity in the mental health profession.
Theoretical Assumption of the Theory of Mind
The theory of mind is assumed to attribute the mental abilities of individuals. To some point, the approach helps an individual to understand the intentions of other individuals that are different from one-self. The approach is perceived as an essential attribute when it comes to the social interaction of individuals. For example, an individual can apply the theory of mind to judge and analyze the behaviors of others (Blair et al., 2016). According to William James, every individual is presumed to have a functional brain (Blair et al., 2016). Therefore, one can only intuit the existence of self-mind through a continuous introspection of his/her behaviors. From the theory, it is assumed that some individuals have analogous minds which are different from others. In other words, no one on earth has a similar mind with that of another person. It is assumed that if a person lacks a complete theory of mind, then the person has either a cognitive and developmental impairment.
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The “theory of mind” is an innate potential capability of individual which demands social and physical development in the entire life of a person. From William’s thinking, the “theory of mind” is a byproduct of great hyper-cognitive ability for individuals to monitor and register their behavioral functioning. The evidence shows that the doctrine of mind is closely linked with the language development of an individual. The research shows that the correlation between thought and language is about 0.43 representing a robust correlation. The relationship indicates that both the “theory of mind” and language begin to develop the same time as the child grow.
The” theory of mind” is classified as a branch of cognitive science. It explains how people ascribe the mental states of others by predicting their reasoning. It further analyses the mindreading and mentalistic abilities by asserting that individuals share such skills in their entire lives. For instance, the skills are used to treat other agents as the owners of psychological state that are not observable.
Empirical Evidence
As individual ages, the theory of mind keeps on declining day by day. William has proposed that the critical aspects of the” theory of mind” develop when an individual is between 3 to 4 years (Wellman, 2017). There is a mind scale which controls the development of different desires of an individual. Williams asserts that there is an empirical investigation which seeks to understand whether small children possess theory of mind. He has found that it is quite difficult to assess precisely what pre-linguistic children perceive the world.
The theory of mind is linked with a health condition known as autism. In other words, the theory of mind is believed to be a critical component of autism. William says that children with autism were quite challenged to answer false belief tests. For example, only 20% of children with autism answered such questions correctly (Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 2015). Therefore, it is noted that the reason for autism contributes to social interaction aspects. When understanding the theory of mind has a source for autism, it is good to note that comprehending the mental state of an individual is different from caring the feelings of others. People who have problems with the theory of mind have the same level of compassion just like those who have a better theory of mind.
Psychologists measure the theory of mind in various ways. However, the conventional method they use is known as the false -belief task. In this scenario, a person requests a child to observe two puppets and later on asks them questions which are relevant to the test. The person will confidently be able to tell which child has a robust theory of mind. The child with undeveloped theory mind will respond in a way that one can tell the cognitive abilities if the child is underdeveloped. Children who are under three years will continuously answer false beliefs questions wrongly.
The leading critical milestone of the theory of mind is the ability to gain false attributes. In other words, Williams intended to seek and recognize the diverging beliefs about the world by different people. Therefore, to achieve that, James first attempt was to understand how knowledge is formed. He concluded that the ideas of individuals are based on their experience and hence the mental abilities among the individuals' reality. The behaviors of individuals are predicted according to their theory of mind especially by looking at their mental states.
Implications of “Theory of Mind”
All adults must have developed the theory of mind during their childhood. Therefore, they apply such concepts to meet the demand of their social lives. For example, they have developed minds which help them snap a decision to fit in competitive games in their day to day operations. The theory of is perceived to be automatic, and hence it is desirable. As a result, it enables individuals to fit in fast-moving conversations. William says that the theory of mind is effortful. For example, it is quite effortful to judge whether defendants are guilty or innocent. William suggests that individuals have "two systems" of mind. The first system is efficient in setting useful plans for different circumstances. The second system is effortful and enables the flexibility of the mind of an individual. However, Williams adds that similar cores of minds can be used in both complex and simple ways.
The theory of mind is very important to the development process of every person. several researchers have used the theory to establish equity in the scope of the mental health profession. At childhood, individuals are quite egocentric and are unable to think about the mental state of others. It is observed that as a person grows, he/she attains a developed theory of mind. Interestingly, the theory of mind enables individuals to infer the mind of others. In other words, one can tell what is in the mind of other people by keenly observing their behaviors. Therefore, if one can accurately understand the ideas of others, he/she can respond accordingly.
All adults must have developed the theory of mind during their childhood. They apply such concepts to meet the demand of their social lives. For example, they have developed brains which help them snap a decision to fit in competitive games in their day to day operations (Blair et al., 2016). The theory of is perceived to be automatic, and hence it is desirable. As a result, it enables individuals to fit in fast-moving conversations. William says that the theory of mind is effortful. For example, it is quite effortful to judge whether defendants are guilty or innocent. William argues that individuals have "two systems" of mind. The first system is efficient in setting useful plans for different circumstances. The second system is effortful and enables the flexibility of an individual's way of thinking. However, William adds that similar cores of minds can be used in both complex and simple ways.
Psychologists measure the theory of mind in various ways. However, the conventional method they use is known as the false belief task. In this scenario, a person requests a child to observe two puppets and later ask them questions. The person will confidently be able to tell which child has a robust theory of mind. The child with undeveloped theory of mind will respond in a way that one can tell whether the cognitive abilities if the child is underdeveloped. According to William, children who are under three years will continuously answer false beliefs questions wrongly.
The “theory of mind” is not an all or nothing concept. At some point, an individual may understand the mental situation of others. But he/she will reach a point where he /she will struggle with a more nuanced issue. It is proven that one may confidently pass a false belie question but fail to understand nonliteral speech. The most challenging test of mind involves a scenario where one is asked to tell the emotions of an individual by looking at the photographs of their eyes.
Theory of mind is currently increasing a lot of appreciations in the scope of cognitive characteristics. From various perspectives, the theory of mind is associated with innate abilities where individuals have the power to comprehend and predict the behavior of other people. In many cases, the theory of mind has assisted children who lack innate knowledge. As a result, infants can learn the practices of people as required. More so, the theory of mind is not sex or gender-based. It means the cognitive abilities in men are similar to that in women. However, to some point, there is an assumption that three out of four adolescent girls were more skilled than boys of the same age (Blair et al., 2016). In other words, there is an assumption that girls are smart in making inferences on thoughts.
Conclusion
Theory of mind is a theory that is getting a lot of concern in the current world. It has been used by several psychologists to analyze the cognitive abilities of peoples. Currently, many researchers have scrutinized some of the diverse skills that can help understand and improve the mind of children. Additionally, there is a generation of crucial social cognitive skills to improve the mental abilities of people. For example, researchers are continuously encouraging people to imitate various novel actions so that they can develop excellent cognitive skills. Individuals with a proper theory of mind can quickly form a hypothesis concerning the thoughts of other people. They can observe and identify individuals who have negative feelings about them and try as much as possible to avoid them.
References
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (2015). Does the autistic child have a "theory of mind"?. Cognition, 21(1), 37-46.
Blair, J., Sellars, C., Strickland, I., Clark, F., Williams, A., Smith, M., & Jones, L. (2016). Theory of mind in the psychopath. Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, 7(1), 15-25.
Wellman, H. M. (2017). The child's theory of mind. The MIT Press.
