Developmental Interest Group (DIG)

What We Think About When We Think About Other Minds

Many of the things that humans excel at—such as moral reasoning, social learning, and language use—are deeply tied to our ability to think about other people’s minds. Yet, research on the development of Theory of Mind has had limited influence on our understanding of how these capacities emerge. In this talk, I will argue that this is partly due to the assumption that representing other minds is equivalent to representing mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions. I will argue this view is too narrow: People do more than represent mental states and also track cognitive processes like attention, reasoning, and recall. I will show how these representations shape complex social behavior and present some research on children’s developing ability to understand not only other people’s minds but also their underlying cognitive processes..

We encourage in-person attendance but if you are unable to attend in person, please join us via this Zoom link.