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8 THEORY OF MIND DEVELOPMENT IN DEAF CHILDREN Ethan Remmel, Jeffrey G. Bettger, and Amy M. Weinberg Theory of mind development in deaf children is a new and exciting area of research . The first study on the topic was published in 1995, and to date only about a dozen studies have been published or presented. But even in this relatively short period of time, researchers have learned a great deal. Research teams from around the world (Australia, France, the United States, and Great Britain) have produced converging evidence on a number of important issues. This chapter provides a brief overview of theory of mind in general, including some of the major theoretical debates, and then reviews the existing research on theory of mind development in deaf children. The authors summarize the patterns that have emerged thus far and point out where issues remain unresolved and further research is needed. OVERVIEW OF THEORY OF MIND What Is Theory of Mind? Theory of mind is a type of social cognition (i.e., thinking about people). Theory of mind refers to the body of knowledge that individuals use to predict and explain people's behavior. Adults in European-American cultures typically predict and explain people's behavior via the attribution of mental states such as beliefs and desires.1 That is, adults assume that people have minds and that there are lawful causal relations between people's experiences, their mental states, and their intentional actions. For example, if Max wants a cookie and believes that there are cookies in the cookie jar, then adults will predict, ceteris paribus, that Max will go to the cookie jar. This material is based on work supported by a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship to Ethan Remmel. 1. See Lillard (1998) for a review of possible cultural variation in theory of mind. This discussion focuses on what Lillard calls the "European-American Social Science Model" of theory of mind. 113 114 ETHAN REMMEL, JEFFREY G. BETIGER, AND AMY M. WEINBERG Both philosophers of mind (Dretske 1988; Stich 1983) and social psychologists (Heider 1958; Ross 1977) have examined theory of mind in adults, although they usually use the labels "folk psychology" and "intuitive psychology," respectively. These labels are useful in distinguishing theory of mind from academic or scientific psychology. Theory of mind knowledge is neither learned in psychology classrooms nor revised in research laboratories. "Folk" or "intuitive" conceptions of how the mind works and influences behavior are used by ordinary people from an early age to make sense of their social worlds. This chapter uses the term "theory of mind" because that is the most common label within developmental psychology. In the past decade or so, research on theory of mind development has become one of the most active and productive areas in developmental psychology (Flavell and Miller 1998). This research program is related to two earlier research traditions with which readers may be more familiar. The first is Piagetian research on egocentrism and perspective-taking. A mature theory of mind requires an understanding that other people have minds and that other people's mental states (perceptions , desires, beliefs, emotions, etc.) may be different from one's own. The second is research on metacognition (thinking about thinking). But whereas research on metacognition typically concerns children's knowledge of higher-level mental strategies (e.g., the relationship between rehearsal and memory), research on theory of mind concerns children's knowledge of more basic mental processes (e.g., the relationship between perception and belief). Representational Theory of Mind As mentioned earlier, adults in Western cultures typically predict and explain people 's actions with reference to the actor's beliefs and desires. In many situations, however, reference to desires is sufficient. To return to our earlier example, if asked to explain why Max went to the cookie jar, the statement "because he wanted a cookie" would ordinarily be sufficient. The fact that "He thought there were cookies in the cookie jar" is implied but not typically stated. As long as everyone shares the same beliefs about the state of the world, people's actions can be predicted and explained on the basis of their desires. One leading developmental psychologist, Henry Wellman, proposes that young children understand the social world in this way. According to Wellman (1990), 2-year-olds have a "desire psychology"; that is, they appreciate that other people may have different desires but not that other people may have different beliefs about the state of the world (a sort...

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