I am trying to desing an experiment to establish the relationship between Inhibitory Control and Theory of Mind, and I would like to know if somebody has used similr experiments. My hypothesis is that Inhibitory Control modulate the expression of theory of mind. Your help will be valuable for me.
Thanks
Dear Wilmar
I know of no specific study that addresses the question you raise. But I find it interesting and makes much sense to ask if there is a relationship between children's ability to inhibit undesirable cues or information and their performance on false beliefs tasks. Needless to say, children's ability to understand the existence of false beliefs lies at the heart of children's theories of mind.
As I see it, young children's (around 3 years of age) tendency to say that in the change or transfer situation, for example, the protagonist [see, for this respect, Wimmer and Perner's (1983) classic experiment] is going to look for the object (e.g., a chocolate bar) where it is really and not where s/he thinks that it is, may be due to their inability to inhibit the information that the focal object is really in A, that is, the place to which it was transferred -- this not being known by the protagonist -- and not in B, that is, the place where the protagonist left the chocolate bar before going to school. Children around 4 years generally perform well on false beliefs tasks because, one may say, they are capable of inhibiting the interference of salient cues (e.g, the transferred object is really in A).In other words, when solving false beliefs tasks, children under 3 years follow, say, a ontological criterion, whereas children above 3 years follow, say, an epistemological criterion. Note that we can explain young children's failure on Piagetian conservation tasks by appealing to their inability to inhibit the interference of salient cues. For example, in the liquids conservation task, when one passes the drinking water from a low and wide container (A) to a high and narrow container (B), the drinking water gets higher at B than at A. if this cue is not ignored or inhibited, children tend to say that there is more water in B than in A. The more children are incapable of inhibiting or ignoring this visual cue the more they are likely to be non-conservers.
All that said, your hypothesis that Inhibitory Control modulate the expression of theory of mind makes much sense to me.
Best regards,
Orlando
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Not specifically. There have been scores of studies, though, that include both inhibitory control and theory of mind. Some of them concern "typically developing" people, others one form of psychopathology or another (schizophrenia, autism, etc.). I'm attaching one article that has at least some bearing on your research. Good luck with it moving forward!
Dear Orlando,
Thanks for your comments, is great that you find my hypothesis interesting. Your statements will help me to design the experiment. Any aditional idea will be helpful.
Kind regards
Dear Stephen,
Thanks for the paper, it will be helpful.
Regards
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