The cognitive and neural dynamics of theory of mind in adults and older children.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to think about what others see, know, think, want and intend, and is thought to be a fundamental basis of social interaction and communication. ToM has been widely studied in young children and infants, and more recently its cognitive and neural basis has begun to be studied in adults.
The project will use recently-developed behavioural methods that allow older children's and adults' simple ToM judgements to be assessed with the very same tasks, and will simultaneously measure brain activity, via recordings of electrical potential on the scalp.
Experiment 1 will test whether adults automatically calculate the character's visual perspective, even when they do not need to.
Experiment 2 will also test adults, to investigate whether the effort required for selecting self or other perspectives is exerted while participants are thinking of the correct response or after they have already begun responding.
Experiment 3 will test children aged 8 to 10 years on a suitably adapted task. This study will examine how know changes in brain structure in this age range are related to poorly-understood changes in perspective-taking beyond the age of 6 or 7 years.