Theory of Mind and the Sally Anne Test

In this video, we continue our discussion of developmental psychology (that is, child psychology) by learning about theory of mind. We also discuss false belief tasks, the way we test theory of mind abilities in children, and a famous false belief task in particular known as the Sally-Anne Test.

Theory of Mind: The ability to reason about what other people know or believe; the understanding that others have different thoughts or preferences.

Sally-Anne Test: A traditional false belief task designed to test whether children understand that other people can have different—and even inaccurate—knowledge states than themselves.

[ganeshprem]

Thank you! That was a great explanation!

[raven]

I found this through looking up mindblindness after finding out it's supposedly a possible symptom of autism. Thank you for this great explanation. I really appreciate it over the other information I got about the subject. I have autism. Discovering some people don't think we have this ability feels insulting! OF COURSE Sally would look in her basket first! And I would have said the same thing as a child. She can't know what happened in her absence, so she would rely on logic. Furthermore, I have the sense to know that if someone is grumpy they might have had a bad day, etc. We DO have empathy and logic.

[sabrinathemoodywitch]

which study revealed ToM abilities in infants from as young as 6 months?

[harshitasai]

Thanks. You made it easy to understand!

[saad.malwan]

Good evening Mr. Daniel Storage, I am from Iraq, a master’s student. Please help me to send me a study that talks about a detailed theory of mind. Thank you for your help.

[Gaze]

But where would Sally look after she finds out her basket is empty? She would assume Anne stole it and put it in the box, so eventually she would peek into both containers.

[lenlen]

I think there's a group of people who think that it was implied Sally already looked in her basket

[wardhamuneeb]

Hit like if u answered Anne's box, like me 😂

[therabbithat]

It seems like the Sally Anne test requires more working memory than it does Theory of Mind.

[nicolasrey-coquais]

Sally knows that Anne is a thieving little brat. No need to waste time looking into the basket. Or, Sally knows that Anne is her servant, and expects her to clean up after her, putting the toy is the more appropriate container. Anne is very much like our politicians :" You're right, Sally. It must be in there. Keep looking!"

[TheEmmakathryn]

You're about to get a lot of tiktok traffic come through..