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A third hypothesis is that the ability to distinguish a whole sentence Jimmy thinks the world is flat from its embedded complement the world is flat and understand that one can be true while the other can be false is related to theory of mind development Recognizing these sentential complements as being independent of one another is a relatively complex syntactic skill and has been shown to be related to increased scores on theory of mind tasks in children |
In addition to these hypotheses there is also evidence that the neural networks between the areas of the brain responsible for language and theory of mind are closely connected The temporoparietal junction has been shown to be involved in the ability to acquire new vocabulary as well as perceive and reproduce words The temporoparietal junction also contains areas that specialize in recognizing faces voices and biological motion in addition to theory of mind Since all of these areas are located so closely together it is reasonable to conclude that they work together Moreover studies have reported an increase in activity in the TPJ when patients are absorbing information through reading or images regarding other peoples beliefs but not while observing information about physical control stimuli |
In older age theory of mind capacities decline irrespective of how exactly they are tested eg stories eyes videos false belief video false belief other faux pas However the decline in other cognitive functions is even stronger suggesting that social cognition is somewhat preserved In contrast to theory of mind empathy shows no impairments in aging |
There are two kinds of theory of mind representations cognitive concerning the mental states beliefs thoughts and intentions of others and affective concerning the emotions of others Cognitive theory of mind is further separated into first order eg I think she thinks that and second order eg he thinks that she thinks that There is evidence that cognitive and affective theory of mind processes are functionally independent from one another In studies of Alzheimer s disease which typically occurs in older adults the patients display impairment with second order cognitive theory of mind but usually not with first order cognitive or affective theory of mind However it is difficult to discern a clear pattern of theory of mind variation due to age There have been many discrepancies in the data collected thus far likely due to small sample sizes and the use of different tasks that only explore one aspect of theory of mind Many researchers suggest that the theory of mind impairment is simply due to the normal decline in cognitive function |
Researchers have proposed that five key aspects of theory of mind develop sequentially for all children between the ages of three to five This five step theory of mind scale consists of the development of diverse desires DD diverse beliefs DB knowledge access KA false beliefs FB and hidden emotions HE Australian American and European children acquire theory of mind in this exact order and studies with children in Canada India Peru Samoa and Thailand indicate that they all pass the false belief task at around the same time suggesting that the children develop theory of mind consistently around the world |
However children from Iran and China develop theory of mind in a slightly different order Although they begin the development of theory of mind around the same time toddlers from these countries understand knowledge access KA before Western children but take longer to understand false beliefs FB Researchers believe this swap in the developmental order is related to the culture of collectivism in Iran and China which emphasizes interdependence and shared knowledge as opposed to the culture of individualism in Western countries which promotes individuality and conflicting opinions Because of these different cultural values Iranian and Chinese children might take longer to understand that other people have different sometimes false beliefs This suggests that the development of theory of mind is not universal and solely determined by innate brain processes but also influenced by social and cultural factors |
Whether children younger than 3 or 4 years old may have any theory of mind is a topic of debate among researchers It is a challenging question due to the difficulty of assessing what prelinguistic children understand about others and the world Tasks used in research into the development of Theory of Mind must take into account the umwelt the German word Umwelt means environment or surrounding world of the preverbal child |
One of the most important milestones in theory of mind development is gaining the ability to attribute false belief that is to recognize that others can have beliefs about the world that are diverging To do this it is suggested one must understand how knowledge is formed that people s beliefs are based on their knowledge that mental states can differ from reality and that people s behavior can be predicted by their mental states Numerous versions of the false belief task have been developed based on the initial task done by Wimmer and Perner 1983 |
In the most common version of the false belief task often called the Sally Anne test or Sally Anne task children are told or shown a story involving two characters For example the child is shown two dolls Sally and Anne who have a basket and a box respectively Sally also has a marble which she places into her basket and then leaves the room While she is out of the room Anne takes the marble from the basket and puts it into the box Sally returns and the child is then asked where Sally will look for the marble The child passes the task if she answers that Sally will look in the basket where Sally put the marble the child fails the task if she answers that Sally will look in the box where the child knows the marble is hidden even though Sally can not know this since she did not see it hidden there To pass the task the child must be able to understand that another s mental representation of the situation is different from their own and the child must be able to predict behavior based on that understanding Another example is when a boy leaves chocolate on a shelf and then leaves the room His mother puts it in the fridge To pass the task the child must understand that the boy upon returning holds the false belief that his chocolate is still on the shelf |
The results of research using false belief tasks have been fairly consistent most normally developing children are able to pass the tasks from around age four Notably while most children including those with Down syndrome are able to pass this test in one study 80 of children diagnosed with autism were unable to do so |
Also adults can experience problems with false beliefs For instance when they show hindsight bias defined as the inclination to see events that have already happened as being more predictable than they were before they took place In an experiment by Fischhoff in 1975 adult subjects who were asked for an independent assessment were unable to disregard information on actual outcome Also in experiments with complicated situations when assessing others thinking adults can be unable to disregard certain information that they have been given |
Other tasks have been developed to try to solve the problems inherent in the false belief task In the Unexpected contents or Smarties task experimenters ask children what they believe to be the contents of a box that looks as though it holds a candy called Smarties After the child guesses usually Smarties it is shown that the box in fact contained pencils The experimenter then recloses the box and asks the child what she thinks another person who has not been shown the true contents of the box will think is inside The child passes the task if he she responds that another person will think that Smarties exist in the box but fails the task if she responds that another person will think that the box contains pencils Gopnik Astington 1988 found that children pass this test at age four or five years |
The false photograph task is another task that serves as a measure of theory of mind development In this task children must reason about what is represented in a photograph that differs from the current state of affairs Within the false photograph task either a location or identity change exists In the location change task the examiner puts an object in one location eg chocolate in an open green cupboard whereupon the child takes a Polaroid photograph of the scene While the photograph is developing the examiner moves the object to a different location eg a blue cupboard allowing the child to view the examiner s action The examiner asks the child two control questions When we first took the picture where was the object and Where is the object now The subject is also asked a false photograph question Where is the object in the picture The child passes the task if he she correctly identifies the location of the object in the picture and the actual location of the object at the time of the question However the last question might be misinterpreted as Where in this room is the object that the picture depicts and therefore some examiners use an alternative phrasing |
To make it easier for animals young children and individuals with classical Kanner type autism to understand and perform theory of mind tasks researchers have developed tests in which verbal communication is deemphasized some whose administration does not involve verbal communication on the part of the examiner some whose successful completion does not require verbal communication on the part of the subject and some that meet both of the foregoing standards One category of tasks uses a preferential looking paradigm with looking time as the dependent variable For instance 9 month old infants prefer looking at behaviors performed by a human hand over those made by an inanimate hand like object Other paradigms look at rates of imitative behavior the ability to replicate and complete unfinished goal directed acts and rates of pretend play |
Recent research on the early precursors of theory of mind has looked at innovative ways at capturing preverbal infants understanding of other people s mental states including perception and beliefs Using a variety of experimental procedures studies have shown that infants in their second year of life have an implicit understanding of what other people see and what they know A popular paradigm used to study infants theory of mind is the violation of expectation procedure which predicates on infants tendency to look longer at unexpected and surprising events compared to familiar and expected events Therefore their looking times measures would give researchers an indication of what infants might be inferring or their implicit understanding of events One recent study using this paradigm found that 16 month olds tend to attribute beliefs to a person whose visual perception was previously witnessed as being reliable compared to someone whose visual perception was unreliable Specifically 16 month olds were trained to expect a person s excited vocalization and gaze into a container to be associated with finding a toy in the reliable looker condition or an absence of a toy in the unreliable looker condition Following this training phase infants witnessed in an object search task the same persons either searching for a toy in the correct or incorrect location after they both witnessed the location of where the toy was hidden Infants who experienced the reliable looker were surprised and therefore looked longer when the person searched for the toy in the incorrect location compared to the correct location In contrast the looking time for infants who experienced the unreliable looker did not differ for either search locations These findings suggest that 16 month old infants can differentially attribute beliefs about a toy s location based on the person s prior record of visual perception |
The theory of mind impairment describes a difficulty someone would have with perspective taking This is also sometimes referred to as mind blindness This means that individuals with a theory of mind impairment would have a difficult time seeing phenomena from any other perspective than their own Individuals who experience a theory of mind deficit have difficulty determining the intentions of others lack understanding of how their behavior affects others and have a difficult time with social reciprocity Theory of Mind deficits have been observed in people with autism spectrum disorders people with schizophrenia people with nonverbal learning disorder people with attention deficit disorder persons under the influence of alcohol and narcotics sleep deprived persons and persons who are experiencing severe emotional or physical pain Theory of mind deficits have also been observed in deaf children who are late signers ie are born to hearing parents but the deficit is due to the delay in language learning not any cognitive deficit and therefore disappears once the child learns sign language |
In 1985 Simon Baron Cohen Alan M Leslie and Uta Frith suggested that children with autism do not employ theory of mind and suggested that autistic children have particular difficulties with tasks requiring the child to understand another person s beliefs These difficulties persist when children are matched for verbal skills and have been taken as a key feature of autism |
Many individuals classified as autistic have severe difficulty assigning mental states to others and they seem to lack theory of mind capabilities Researchers who study the relationship between autism and theory of mind attempt to explain the connection in a variety of ways One account assumes that theory of mind plays a role in the attribution of mental states to others and in childhood pretend play According to Leslie theory of mind is the capacity to mentally represent thoughts beliefs and desires regardless of whether or not the circumstances involved are real This might explain why some autistic individuals show extreme deficits in both theory of mind and pretend play However Hobson proposes a social affective justification which suggests that with an autistic person deficits in theory of mind result from a distortion in understanding and responding to emotions He suggests that typically developing human beings unlike autistic individuals are born with a set of skills such as social referencing ability that later lets them comprehend and react to other people s feelings Other scholars emphasize that autism involves a specific developmental delay so that autistic children vary in their deficiencies because they experience difficulty in different stages of growth Very early setbacks can alter proper advancement of joint attention behaviors which may lead to a failure to form a full theory of mind |
It has been speculated that Theory of Mind exists on a continuum as opposed to the traditional view of a discrete presence or absence While some research has suggested that some autistic populations are unable to attribute mental states to others recent evidence points to the possibility of coping mechanisms that facilitate a spectrum of mindful behavior Tine et al suggest that autistic children score substantially lower on measures of social theory of mind in comparison to children diagnosed with Asperger syndrome |
Generally children with more advanced theory of mind abilities display more advanced social skills greater adaptability to new situations and greater cooperation with others As a result these children are typically well liked However children may use their mind reading abilities to manipulate outwit tease or trick their peers Individuals possessing inferior theory of mind skills such as children with autism spectrum disorder may be socially rejected by their peers since they are unable communicate effectively Social rejection has been proven to negatively impact a child s development and can put the child at greater risk of developing depressive symptoms |
Peer mediated interventions PMI are a school based treatment approach for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in which peers are trained to be role models in order to promote social behavior Laghi et al studied if analysis of prosocial nice and antisocial nasty theory of mind behaviors could be used in addition to teacher recommendations to select appropriate candidates for PMI programs Selecting children with advanced theory of mind skills who use them in prosocial ways will theoretically make the program more effective While the results indicated that analyzing the social uses of theory of mind of possible candidates for a PMI program is invaluable it may not be a good predictor of a candidate s performance as a role model |
Individuals with the diagnosis of schizophrenia can show deficits in theory of mind Mirjam Sprong and colleagues investigated the impairment by examining 29 different studies with a total of over 1500 participants This meta analysis showed significant and stable deficit of theory of mind in people with schizophrenia They performed poorly on false belief tasks which test the ability to understand that others can hold false beliefs about events in the world and also on intention inference tasks which assess the ability to infer a character s intention from reading a short story Schizophrenia patients with negative symptoms such as lack of emotion motivation or speech have the most impairment in theory of mind and are unable to represent the mental states of themselves and of others Paranoid schizophrenic patients also perform poorly because they have difficulty accurately interpreting others intentions The meta analysis additionally showed that IQ gender and age of the participants does not significantly affect the performance of theory of mind tasks |
Current research suggests that impairment in theory of mind negatively affects clinical insight the patient s awareness of their mental illness Insight requires theory of mind a patient must be able to adopt a third person perspective and see the self as others do A patient with good insight would be able to accurately self represent by comparing oneself with others and by viewing oneself from the perspective of others Insight allows a patient to recognize and react appropriately to his symptoms however a patient who lacks insight would not realize that he has a mental illness because of his inability to accurately self represent Therapies that teach patients perspective taking and self reflection skills can improve abilities in reading social cues and taking the perspective of another person |
The majority of the current literature supports the argument that the theory of mind deficit is a stable trait characteristic rather than a state characteristic of schizophrenia The meta analysis conducted by Sprong et al showed that patients in remission still had impairment in theory of mind The results indicate that the deficit is not merely a consequence of the active phase of schizophrenia |
Schizophrenic patients deficit in theory of mind impairs their daily interactions with others An example of a disrupted interaction is one between a schizophrenic parent and a child Theory of mind is particularly important for parents who must understand the thoughts and behaviors of their children and react accordingly Dysfunctional parenting is associated with deficits in the first order theory of mind the ability to understand another person s thoughts and the second order theory of mind the ability to infer what one person thinks about another person s thoughts Compared with healthy mothers mothers with schizophrenia are found to be more remote quiet self absorbed insensitive unresponsive and to have fewer satisfying interactions with their children They also tend to misinterpret their children s emotional cues and often misunderstand neutral faces as negative Activities such as role playing and individual or group based sessions are effective interventions that help the parents improve on perspective taking and theory of mind Although there is a strong association between theory of mind deficit and parental role dysfunction future studies could strengthen the relationship by possibly establishing a causal role of theory of mind on parenting abilities |
Impairments in theory of mind as well as other social cognitive deficits are commonly found in people suffering from alcoholism due to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol on the brain particularly the prefrontal cortex |
Individuals in a current major depressive episode a disorder characterized by social impairment show deficits in theory of mind decoding Theory of mind decoding is the ability to use information available in the immediate environment eg facial expression tone of voice body posture to accurately label the mental states of others The opposite pattern enhanced theory of mind is observed in individuals vulnerable to depression including those individuals with past Major Depressive Disorder MDD dysphoric individuals and individuals with a maternal history of MDD |
Children diagnosed with specific language impairment SLI exhibit much lower scores on reading and writing sections of standardized tests yet have a normal nonverbal IQ These language deficits can be any specific deficits in lexical semantics syntax or pragmatics or a combination of multiple problems They often exhibit poorer social skills than normally developing children and seem to have problems decoding beliefs in others A recent meta analysis confirmed that children with SLI have substantially lower scores on theory of mind tasks compared to typically developing children This strengthens the claim that language development is related to theory of mind |
Research on theory of mind in autism led to the view that mentalizing abilities are subserved by dedicated mechanisms that can in some cases be impaired while general cognitive function remains largely intact |
Neuroimaging research has supported this view demonstrating specific brain regions consistently engaged during theory of mind tasks PET research on theory of mind using verbal and pictorial story comprehension tasks has identified a set of brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex mPFC and area around posterior superior temporal sulcus pSTS and sometimes precuneus and amygdala temporopolar cortex Subsequently research on the neural basis of theory of mind has diversified with separate lines of research focused on the understanding of beliefs intentions and more complex properties of minds such as psychological traits |
Studies from Rebecca Saxe s lab at MIT using a false belief versus false photograph task contrast aimed at isolating the mentalizing component of the false belief task have very consistently found activation in mPFC precuneus and temporo parietal junction TPJ right lateralized In particular it has been proposed that the right TPJ rTPJ is selectively involved in representing the beliefs of others However some debate exists as some scientists have noted that the same rTPJ region has been consistently activated during spatial reorienting of visual attention Jean Decety from the University of Chicago and Jason Mitchell from Harvard have thus proposed that the rTPJ subserves a more general function involved in both false belief understanding and attentional reorienting rather than a mechanism specialized for social cognition However it is possible that the observation of overlapping regions for representing beliefs and attentional reorienting may simply be due to adjacent but distinct neuronal populations that code for each The resolution of typical fMRI studies may not be good enough to show that distinct adjacent neuronal populations code for each of these processes In a study following Decety and Mitchell Saxe and colleagues used higher resolution fMRI and showed that the peak of activation for attentional reorienting is approximately 6 10mm above the peak for representing beliefs Further corroborating that differing populations of neurons may code for each process they found no similarity in the patterning of fMRI response across space |
Functional imaging has also been used to study the detection of mental state information in Heider Simmelesque animations of moving geometric shapes which typical humans automatically perceive as social interactions laden with intention and emotion Three studies found remarkably similar patterns of activation during the perception of such animations versus a random or deterministic motion control mPFC pSTS fusiform face area FFA and amygdala were selectively engaged during the Theory of Mind condition Another study presented subjects with an animation of two dots moving with a parameterized degree of intentionality quantifying the extent to which the dots chased each other and found that pSTS activation correlated with this parameter |
A separate body of research has implicated the posterior superior temporal sulcus in the perception of intentionality in human action this area is also involved in perceiving biological motion including body eye mouth and point light display motion One study found increased pSTS activation while watching a human lift his hand versus having his hand pushed up by a piston intentional versus unintentional action Several studies have found increased pSTS activation when subjects perceive a human action that is incongruent with the action expected from the actor s context and inferred intention Examples would be a human performing a reach to grasp motion on empty space next to an object versus grasping the object a human shifting eye gaze toward empty space next to a checkerboard target versus shifting gaze toward the target an unladen human turning on a light with his knee versus turning on a light with his knee while carrying a pile of books and a walking human pausing as he passes behind a bookshelf versus walking at a constant speed In these studies actions in the congruent case have a straightforward goal and are easy to explain in terms of the actor s intention The incongruent actions on the other hand require further explanation why would someone twist empty space next to a gear and then apparently would demand more processing in the STS Note that this region is distinct from the temporo parietal area activated during false belief tasks Also note that pSTS activation in most of the above studies was largely right lateralized following the general trend in neuroimaging studies of social cognition and perception Also right lateralized are the TPJ activation during false belief tasks the STS response to biological motion and the FFA response to faces |
Neuropsychological evidence has provided support for neuroimaging results regarding the neural basis of theory of mind Studies with patients suffering from a lesion of the frontal lobes and the temporoparietal junction of the brain between the temporal lobe and parietal lobe reported that they have difficulty with some theory of mind tasks This shows that theory of mind abilities are associated with specific parts of the human brain However the fact that the medial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction are necessary for theory of mind tasks does not imply that these regions are specific to that function TPJ and mPFC may subserve more general functions necessary for Theory of Mind |
Research by Vittorio Gallese Luciano Fadiga and Giacomo Rizzolatti reviewed in has shown that some sensorimotor neurons which are referred to as mirror neurons first discovered in the premotor cortex of rhesus monkeys may be involved in action understanding Single electrode recording revealed that these neurons fired when a monkey performed an action as well as when the monkey viewed another agent carrying out the same task Similarly fMRI studies with human participants have shown brain regions assumed to contain mirror neurons that are active when one person sees another person s goal directed action These data have led some authors to suggest that mirror neurons may provide the basis for theory of mind in the brain and to support simulation theory of mind reading see above |
However there is also evidence against the link between mirror neurons and theory of mind First macaque monkeys have mirror neurons but do not seem to have a human like capacity to understand theory of mind and belief Second fMRI studies of theory of mind typically report activation in the mPFC temporal poles and TPJ or STS but these brain areas are not part of the mirror neuron system Some investigators like developmental psychologist Andrew Meltzoff and neuroscientist Jean Decety believe that mirror neurons merely facilitate learning through imitation and may provide a precursor to the development of Theory of Mind Others like philosopher Shaun Gallagher suggest that mirror neuron activation on a number of counts fails to meet the definition of simulation as proposed by the simulation theory of mindreading |
However in a recent paper Keren Haroush and Ziv Williams outlined the case for a group of neurons in primates brains that uniquely predicted the choice selection of their interacting partner These primates neurons located in the anterior cingulate cortex of rhesus monkeys were observed using single unit recording while the monkeys played a variant of the iterative prisoner s dilemma game By identifying cells that represent the yet unknown intentions of a game partner Haroush Williams study supports the idea that theory of mind may be a fundamental and generalized process and suggests that anterior cingulate cortex neurons may potentially act to complement the function of mirror neurons during social interchange |
Several neuroimaging studies have looked at the neural basis theory of mind impairment in subjects with Asperger syndrome and high functioning autism HFA The first PET study of theory of mind in autism also the first neuroimaging study using a task induced activation paradigm in autism replicated a prior study in normal individuals which employed a story comprehension task This study found displaced and diminished mPFC activation in subjects with autism However because the study used only six subjects with autism and because the spatial resolution of PET imaging is relatively poor these results should be considered preliminary |
A subsequent fMRI study scanned normally developing adults and adults with HFA while performing a reading the mind in the eyes task viewing a photo of a human s eyes and choosing which of two adjectives better describes the person s mental state versus a gender discrimination control The authors found activity in orbitofrontal cortex STS and amygdala in normal subjects and found no amygdala activation and abnormal STS activation in subjects with autism |
A more recent PET study looked at brain activity in individuals with HFA and Asperger syndrome while viewing Heider Simmel animations see above versus a random motion control In contrast to normally developing subjects those with autism showed no STS or FFA activation and significantly less mPFC and amygdala activation Activity in extrastriate regions V3 and LO was identical across the two groups suggesting intact lower level visual processing in the subjects with autism The study also reported significantly less functional connectivity between STS and V3 in the autism group Note however that decreased temporal correlation between activity in STS and V3 would be expected simply from the lack of an evoked response in STS to intent laden animations in subjects with autism A more informative analysis would be to compute functional connectivity after regressing out evoked responses from all time series |
A subsequent study using the incongruent congruent gaze shift paradigm described above found that in high functioning adults with autism posterior STS pSTS activation was undifferentiated while they watched a human shift gaze toward a target and then toward adjacent empty space The lack of additional STS processing in the incongruent state may suggest that these subjects fail to form an expectation of what the actor should do given contextual information or that feedback about the violation of this expectation does nt reach STS Both explanations involve an impairment in the ability to link eye gaze shifts with intentional explanations This study also found a significant anticorrelation between STS activation in the incongruent congruent contrast and social subscale score on the Autism Diagnostic Interview Revised but not scores on the other subscales |
In 2011 an fMRI study demonstrated that the right temporoparietal junction rTPJ of higher functioning adults with autism was not more selectively activated for mentalizing judgments when compared to physical judgments about self and other rTPJ selectivity for mentalizing was also related to individual variation on clinical measures of social impairment individuals whose rTPJ was increasingly more active for mentalizing compared to physical judgments were less socially impaired while those who showed little to no difference in response to mentalizing or physical judgments were the most socially impaired This evidence builds on work in typical development that suggests rTPJ is critical for representing mental state information irrespective of whether it is about oneself or others It also points to an explanation at the neural level for the pervasive mind blindness difficulties in autism that are evident throughout the lifespan |
The brain regions associated with theory of mind include the superior temporal gyrus STS the temporoparietal junction TPJ the medial prefrontal cortex MPFC the precuneus and the amygdala The reduced activity in the MPFC of individuals with schizophrenia is associated with the Theory of mind deficit and may explain impairments in social function among people with schizophrenia Increased neural activity in MPFC is related to better perspective taking emotion management and increased social functioning Disrupted brain activities in areas related to theory of mind may increase social stress or disinterest in social interaction and contribute to the social dysfunction associated with schizophrenia |
Group member average scores of theory of mind abilities measured with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test RME are suggested as drivers of successful group performance In particular high group average scores on the RME are shown to be correlated with the collective intelligence factor c defined as a group s ability to perform a wide range of mental tasks a group intelligence measure similar to the g factor for general individual intelligence RME is a Theory of Mind test for adults that shows sufficient test retest reliability and constantly differentiates control groups from individuals with functional autism or Asperger syndrome It is one of the most widely accepted and well validated tests for Theory of Mind abilities within adults |
The evolutionary origin of theory of mind remains obscure While many theories make claims about its role in the development of human language and social cognition few of them specify in detail any evolutionary neurophysiological precursors A recent theory claims that Theory of Mind has its roots in two defensive reactions namely immobilization stress and tonic immobility which are implicated in the handling of stressful encounters and also figure prominently in mammalian childrearing practices Tsoukalas 2017 Their combined effect seems capable of producing many of the hallmarks of theory of mind eg eye contact gaze following inhibitory control and intentional attributions |
An open question is if other animals besides humans have a genetic endowment and social environment that allows them to acquire a theory of mind in the same way that human children do This is a contentious issue because of the problem of inferring from animal behavior the existence of thinking or of particular thoughts or the existence of a concept of self or self awareness consciousness and qualia One difficulty with nonhuman studies of Theory of Mind is the lack of sufficient numbers of naturalistic observations giving insight into what the evolutionary pressures might be on a species development of theory of mind |
Nonhuman research still has a major place in this field however and is especially useful in illuminating which nonverbal behaviors signify components of theory of mind and in pointing to possible stepping points in the evolution of what many claim to be a uniquely human aspect of social cognition While it is difficult to study human like theory of mind and mental states in species whose potential mental states we have an incomplete understanding researchers can focus on simpler components of more complex capabilities For example many researchers focus on animals understanding of intention gaze perspective or knowledge or rather what another being has seen Call and Tomasello s study that looked at understanding of intention in orangutans chimpanzees and children showed that all three species understood the difference between accidental and intentional acts Part of the difficulty in this line of research is that observed phenomena can often be explained as simple stimulus response learning as it is in the nature of any theorizers of mind to have to extrapolate internal mental states from observable behavior Recently most nonhuman theory of mind research has focused on monkeys and great apes who are of most interest in the study of the evolution of human social cognition Other studies relevant to attributions theory of mind have been conducted using plovers and dogs and have shown preliminary evidence of understanding attention one precursor of theory of mind in others |
There has been some controversy over the interpretation of evidence purporting to show theory of mind ability or inability in animals Two examples serve as demonstration first Povinelli et al 1990 presented chimpanzees with the choice of two experimenters from whom to request food one who had seen where food was hidden and one who by virtue of one of a variety of mechanisms having a bucket or bag over his head a blindfold over his eyes or being turned away from the baiting does not know and can only guess They found that the animals failed in most cases to differentially request food from the knower By contrast Hare Call and Tomasello 2001 found that subordinate chimpanzees were able to use the knowledge state of dominant rival chimpanzees to determine which container of hidden food they approached William Field and Sue Savage Rumbaugh have no doubt that bonobos have developed Theory of Mind and cite their communications with a well known captive bonobo Kanzi as evidence |
In a 2016 experiment ravens Corvus corax were shown to take into account visual access of unseen conspecifics It is suspected that ravens can generalize from their own perceptual experience to infer the possibility of being seen |
A 2016 study published by evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Krupenye brings new light to the existence of Theory of Mind and particularly false beliefs in nonhuman primates |
Changes is a hip hop song by 2Pac featuring Talent The song makes references to the war on drugs the treatment of black people by the police at the time racism explicitly the reconciliation between the black and white races in America the perpetuation of poverty and its accompanying vicious cycle value system in urban African American culture and the difficulties of life in the ghetto |
The song was originally recorded during his tenure at Interscope records in 1992 and was produced by Big D The Impossible Deon Evans Changes was later remixed during 1997 1998 |
The song reuses lines from I Wonder If Heaven Got a Ghetto which was recorded during the same year The song samples the 1986 hit The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby and the Range The chorus of The Way It Is was resung by Talent and was used for this song At times Tupac reused lines from other unreleased songs because he planned to make an updated version at a later date However since his death many of the unreleased and unmastered songs have been officially released |
The remixed version released in 1998 has notably different percussion and a few minor changes to the musical elements The chorus on the original track features a notable difference in a vocal sample of the line It s like that and that s the way it is from Run DMCs It s Like That which is also played twice during the intro The second chorus adds the Ice Cube line Dope dealers you re as bad as the police from his song Us The third chorus omits the Ice Cube sample and adds B boy style chant with an unknown person repeating Clap your hands and feel it clap you hands and feel it until the song ends |
The song is an interpretation of the 1986 hit The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby and the Range Bay Area rapper E40 had interpreted the song already on his track Things ll Never Change for his album Tha Hall of Game The Tupac Changes instrumental was used by Insane Clown Posse in Mom Song a Mother s Day song Nas also sampled the song for his song Black President |
The song was the 1 hit in Norway and the Netherlands and reached the top ten in the singles charts of several other countries including 3 in the United Kingdom which gained Tupac a broader audience |
Released posthumously on his album Greatest Hits the song talks about all of the different issues that were related to Tupac s era of influence notably racism police brutality drugs and gang violence The Huey that 2Pac mentions in the song two shots in the dark now Huey s dead is Huey P Newton founder of the Black Panther Party The song refers to the possibility of a black president of the United States claiming we ai nt ready Further the last verse of the song refers to Tupac s premonition about being shot to death mimicking the sound of the gun with the phrase rat atat tat tat tat |
When examining the lyrics Shakur address several different problem that have directly affected the African American community In the first stanza the War on Drugs is a addressed when he says Give crack to the kids who the hell cares in the same stanza he also adds in how the drugs crack was brought to their neighborhoods as well as weapons He says First ship em dope and let em the brothers Give em guns step back watch em kill each other Shakur not only addresses the War on Drugs but as well as the War on Poverty The majority of the issues that he speaks about in his song are about things that Huey Newton was trying to change He pays homage to Newton while addressing police brutality and corruption in the government He says It s time to fight back that what Huey said Two shots in the dark now Huey s dead Throughout the whole song Shakur is addressing issues that are being created to keep African Americans oppressed in the United States He addresses the issue that at the time the US was not ready to have a Black President as well as the high incarceration rates for African Americans |
Two decades later the song lyrics in which Tupac says Let s change the way we eat let s change the way we live and let s change the way we treat each other You see the old way was nt workin so it s on us to do what we got ta do to survive read like a prophetic roadmap to the actions we all need to be taking to survive the current environmental crisis |
The Chris Hafner directed music video is a compilation of a number of previous music videos Tupac released in addition to home videos and never before seen pictures similar to the format of The Notorious BIG s Dead Wrong also released in 1999 |
Changes was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance at the Grammy Awards of 2000 and remains the only posthumous song to be nominated in this category It was also nominated at the MTV Video Music Award for Best Editing in a Video Best Rap Video in 1999 |
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The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest ranking judicial body in the United States Its membership as set by the Judiciary Act of 1869 consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices any six of whom would constitute a quorum Article II Section 2 Clause 2 of the Constitution grants plenary power to the President of the United States to nominate and with the advice and consent confirmation of the United States Senate appoint justices to the Supreme Court Justices have life tenure and receive a salary which is set at 255500 per year for the chief justice and at 244400 per year for each associate justice as of 2014 |
The Supreme Court was created by Article III of the United States Constitution which stipulates that the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court and was organized by the 1st United States Congress Through the Judiciary Act of 1789 Congress specified the Court s original and appellate jurisdiction created thirteen judicial districts and fixed the number of justices at six one chief justice and five associate justices |
Since 1789 Congress has occasionally altered the size of the Supreme Court historically in response to the country s own expansion in size An 1801 act would have decreased the Court s size to five members upon its next vacancy However an 1802 act negated the effects of the 1801 act upon the Court before any such vacancy occurred maintaining the Court s size at six members Later legislation increased its size to seven members in 1807 to nine in 1837 and to ten in 1863 An 1866 act was to have reduced the Court s size from ten members to seven upon its next three vacancies and two vacancies did occur during this period However before a third vacancy occurred the Judiciary Act of 1869 intervened restoring the Court s size to nine members where it has remained since |
While the justices of the Supreme Court are appointed for life many have retired or resigned Beginning in the early 20th century many justices who left the Court voluntarily did so by retiring from the Court without leaving the federal judiciary altogether A retired justice according to the United States Code is no longer a member of the Supreme Court but remains eligible to serve by designation as a judge of a US Court of Appeals or District Court and many retired justices have served in these capacities Historically the average length of service on the Court has been less than 15 years However since 1970 the average length of service has increased to about 26 years |
There are currently nine justices serving on the Supreme Court listed in order of seniority they are |
Since the Supreme Court was established in 1789 114 persons have served on the Court The length of service on the Court for the 105 nonincumbent justices ranges from William O Douglas s 36 years 211 days to the 163 day tenure of Thomas Johnson As of October 29 2018 the length of service for the nine incumbent justices ranges from Clarence Thomas 7003986800000000000 27 years 6 days to Brett Kavanaugh s 7001230000000000000 23 days Five individuals were confirmed for associate justice and later appointed chief justice separately John Rutledge Edward Douglass White Charles Evans Hughes Harlan F Stone and William Rehnquist While listed twice each of them has been assigned only one index number The justices of the Supreme Court are |
This graphical timeline depicts the progression of the justices on the Supreme Court Information regarding each justice s predecessors successors and fellow justices as well as their tenure on the court can be gleaned and comparisons between justices drawn from it Additionally The progression of presidents along with the number of justices each nominated is shown at the top of the timeline to give a more detailed historical context There are no formal names or numbers for the individual seats of the associate justices which are listed in the table below simply by number Note that due to the several changes in the size of the Court since 1789 two of the seats chronicled 5 and 7 have been abolished both as a result of the Judicial Circuits Act of 1866 |
The immediate reactions to On the Origin of Species the book in which Charles Darwin described evolution by natural selection included international debate though the heat of controversy was less than that over earlier works such as Vestiges of Creation Darwin monitored the debate closely cheering on Thomas Henry Huxley s battles with Richard Owen to remove clerical domination of the scientific establishment While Darwin s illness kept him away from the public debates he read eagerly about them and mustered support through correspondence |
Religious views were mixed with the Church of England s scientific establishment reacting against the book while liberal Anglicans strongly supported Darwin s natural selection as an instrument of God s design Religious controversy was soon diverted by the publication of Essays and Reviews and debate over the higher criticism |
The most famous confrontation took place at the public 1860 Oxford evolution debate during a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science when the Bishop of Oxford Samuel Wilberforce argued against Darwin s explanation In the ensuing debate Joseph Hooker argued strongly in favor of Darwinian evolution Thomas Huxley s support of evolution was so intense that the media and public nicknamed him Darwin s bulldog Huxley became the fiercest defender of the evolutionary theory on the Victorian stage Both sides came away feeling victorious but Huxley went on to depict the debate as pivotal in a struggle between religion and science and used Darwinism to campaign against the authority of the clergy in education as well as daringly advocating the Ape Origin of Man |
Darwin s ideas developed rapidly after returning from the Voyage of the Beagle in 1836 By December 1838 he had developed the basic principles of his theory At that time similar ideas brought others disgrace and association with the revolutionary mob He was conscious of the need to answer all likely objections before publishing While he continued with research he had an immense amount of work in hand analyzing and publishing findings from the Beagle expedition and was repeatedly delayed by illness |
Natural history at that time was dominated by clerical naturalists who saw their science as revealing God s plan and whose income came from the Established Church of England Darwin found three close allies The eminent geologist Charles Lyell whose books had influenced the young Darwin during the Voyage of the Beagle befriended Darwin who he saw as a supporter of his ideas of gradual geological processes with continuing divine Creation of species By the 1840s Darwin became friends with the young botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker who had followed his father into the science and after going on a survey voyage used his contacts to eventually find a position In the 1850s Darwin met Thomas Huxley an ambitious naturalist who had returned from a long survey trip but lacked the family wealth or contacts to find a career and who joined the progressive group around Herbert Spencer looking to make science a profession freed from the clerics |
This was also a time of intense conflict over religious morality in England where evangelicalism led to increasing professionalism of clerics who had previously been expected to act as country gentlemen with wide interests but now were seriously focussed on expanded religious duties A new orthodoxy proclaimed the virtues of truth but also inculcated beliefs that the Bible should be read literally and that religious doubt was in itself sinful so should not be discussed Science was also becoming professional and a series of discoveries cast doubt on literal interpretations of the Bible and the honesty of those denying the findings A series of crises erupted with fierce debate and criticism over issues such as George Combe s The Constitution of Man and the anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation which converted vast popular audiences to the belief that natural laws controlled the development of nature and society German higher criticism questioned the Bible as a historical document in contrast to the evangelical creed that every word was divinely inspired Dissident clergymen even began questioning accepted premises of Christian morality and Benjamin Jowett s 1855 commentary on St Paul brought a storm of controversy |
By September 1854 Darwin s other books reached a stage where he was able to turn his attention fully to Species and from this point he was working to publish his theory On 18 June 1858 he received a parcel from Alfred Russel Wallace enclosing about twenty pages describing an evolutionary mechanism that was similar to Darwin s own theory Darwin put matters in the hands of his friends Lyell and Hooker who agreed on a joint presentation to the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858 Their papers were entitled collectively On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection |
Darwin now worked on an abstract trimmed from his Natural Selection manuscript The publisher John Murray agreed the title as On the Origin of Species through Natural Selection and the book went on sale to the trade on 22 November 1859 The stock of 1250 copies was oversubscribed and Darwin still at Ilkley spa town began corrections for a second edition The novelist Charles Kingsley a Christian socialist country rector sent him a letter of praise It awes me if you be right I must give up much that I have believed it was just as noble a conception of Deity to believe that He created primal forms capable of self development as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunas which he himself had made Darwin added these lines to the last chapter with attribution to a celebrated author and divine |
The reviewers were less encouraging Four days before publication a review in the authoritative Athenaeum by John Leifchild published anonymously as was the custom at that time was quick to pick out the unstated implications of men from monkeys already controversial from Vestiges saw snubs to theologians summing up Darwin s creed as man was born yesterday he will perish tomorrow and concluded that The work deserves attention and will we have no doubt meet with it Scientific naturalists will take up the author upon his own peculiar ground and there will we imagine be a severe struggle for at least theoretical existence Theologians will say and they have a right to be heard Why construct another elaborate theory to exclude Deity from renewed acts of creation Why not at once admit that new species were introduced by the Creative energy of the Omnipotent Why not accept direct interference rather than evolutions of law and needlessly indirect or remote action Having introduced the author and his work we must leave them to the mercies of the Divinity Hall the College the Lecture Room and the Museum At Ilkley Darwin raged But the manner in which he drags in immortality sets the Priests at me leaves me to their mercies is base He would on no account burn me but he will get the wood ready and tell the black beasts how to catch me Darwin sprained an ankle and his health worsened as he wrote to friends it was odious |
By 9 December when Darwin left Ilkley to come home he had been told that Murray was organising a second run of 3000 copies Hooker had been converted Lyell was absolutely gloating and Huxley wrote with such tremendous praise advising that he was sharpening his beak and claws to disembowel the curs who will bark and yelp |
Richard Owen had been the first to respond to the complimentary copies courteously claiming that he had long believed that existing influences were responsible for the ordained birth of species Darwin now had long talks with him and told Lyell that Under garb of great civility he was inclined to be most bitter sneering against me Yet I infer from several expressions that at bottom he goes immense way with us Owen was furious at being included among those defending immutability of species and in effect said that the book offered the best explanation ever published of the manner of formation of species though he did not agree with it in all respects He still had the gravest doubts that transmutation would bestialise man It appears that Darwin had assured Owen that he was looking at everything as resulting from designed laws which Owen interpreted as showing a shared belief in Creative Power |
Darwin had already made his views clearer to others telling Lyell that if each step in evolution was providentially planned the whole procedure would be a miracle and natural selection superfluous He had also sent a copy to John Herschel and on 10 December he told Lyell of having heard by round about channel that Herschel says my Book is the law of higgledy piggledy What this exactly means I do not know but it is evidently very contemptuous If true this is great blow discouragement Darwin subsequently corresponded with Herschel and in January 1861 Herschel added a footnote to the draft of his Physical Geography which while disparaging the principle of arbitrary and casual variation and natural selection as insufficient without intelligent direction said that with some demur as to the genesis of man we are far from disposed to repudiate the view taken of this mysterious subject in Mr Darwin s book |
It was known that the geologic time scale was incomprehensibly vast if unquantifiable From 1848 Darwin discussed data with Andrew Ramsay who had said it is vain to attempt to measure the duration of even small portions of geological epochs A chapter of Lyell s Principles of Geology described the enormous amount of erosion involved in forming the Weald To demonstrate the time available for natural selection to operate Darwin drew on Lyell s example and Ramsay s data in chapter 9 of On the Origin of Species to estimate that erosion of the Weald s layered dome of Lower Cretaceous rocks must have required 306662400 years or say three hundred million years |
The necessary corrections Darwin made to his drafts for the second edition of the Origin were based on comments from others particularly Lyell and added a caveat suggesting a faster rate of erosion of the Weald perhaps it would be safer to allow two or three inches per century and this would reduce the number of years to one hundred and fifty or one hundred million years Copies of the second edition were advertised as ready on 24 December in advance of official publication on 7 January 1860 |
The Saturday Review of 24 December 1859 strongly criticised the methodology of Darwin s calculations On 3 January 1860 Darwin wrote to Hooker about it Some of the remarks about the lapse of years are very good the Reviewer gives me some good well deserved raps confound it I am sorry to confess the truth But it does not at all concern main argument A day later he said to Lyell You saw I suppose Saturday Review argument confined to Geology but has given me some perfectly just severe raps on knuckles |
In the third edition published on 30 April 1861 Darwin cited the Saturday Review article as reason to remove his calculation altogether |
The December 1859 review in the British Unitarian National Review was written by Darwin s old friend William Carpenter who was clear that only a world of order continuity and progress befitted an Omnipotent Deity and that any theological objection to a species of slug or a breed of dog deriving from a previous one was simply absurd dogma He touched on human evolution satisfied that the struggle for existence tended inevitably towards the progressive exaltation of the races engaged in it |
On Boxing Day 26 December The Times carried an anonymous review The staff reviewer as innocent of any knowledge of science as a babe gave the task to Huxley leading Darwin to ask his friend how did you influence Jupiter Olympus and make him give three and a half columns to pure science The old fogies will think the world will come to an end Darwin treasured the piece more than a dozen reviews in common periodicals but noted Upon my life I am sorry for Owen he will be so d d savage for credit given to any other man I strongly suspect is in his eyes so much credit robbed from him Science is so narrow a field it is clear there ought to be only one cock of the walk |
Hooker also wrote a favourable review which appeared at the end of December in the Gardener s Chronicle and treated the theory as an extension of horticultural lore |
In his lofty position at the head of Science Owen received numerous complaints about the book The Revd Adam Sedgwick geologist at the University of Cambridge who had taken Darwin on his first geology field trip could not see the point in a world without providence The missionary David Livingstone could see no struggle for existence on the African plains Jeffries Wyman at Harvard saw no truth in chance variations |
The most enthusiastic response came from atheists with Hewett Watson hailing Darwin as the greatest revolutionist in natural history of this century The 68 year old Robert Edmund Grant who had shown him the study of invertebrates when Darwin was a student at the University of Edinburgh and who was still teaching Lamarckian evolution weekly at University College London brought out a small book on classification dedicated to Darwin With one fell sweep of the wand of truth you have now scattered to the winds the pestilential vapours accumulated by species mongers |
In January 1860 Darwin told Lyell of a reported incident at Waterloo Bridge Station I never till to day realised that it was getting widely distributed for in a letter from a lady today to Emma she says she heard a man enquiring for it at Railway Station at Waterloo Bridge the Bookseller said that he had none till new Edit was out The Bookseller said he had not read it but had heard it was a very remarkable book |
In December 1859 the botanist Asa Gray negotiated with a Boston publisher for publication of an authorised American version however he learnt that two New York publishing firms were already planning to exploit the absence of international copyright to print Origin Darwin wrote in January I never dreamed of my Book being so successful with general readers I believe I should have laughed at the idea of sending the sheets to America and asked Gray to keep any profits Gray managed to negotiate a 5 per cent royalty with Appleton s of New York who got their edition out in mid January and the other two withdrew In a May letter Darwin mentioned a print run of 2500 copies but it is not clear if this was the first printing alone as there were four that year |
When sending his Historical preface and corrections for the American edition in February Darwin thanked Asa Gray for his comments as a Review from a man who is not an entire convert if fair moderately favourable is in all respects the best kind of Review About weak points I agree The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder but when I think of the fine known gradations my reason tells me I ought to conquer the cold shudder In April he continued It is curious that I remember well time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over but I have got over this stage of the complaint now small trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable The sight of a feather in a peacock s tail whenever I gaze at it makes me sick A month later Darwin emphasised that he was bewildered by the theological aspects and had no intention to write atheistically but could not see as plainly as others do as I sh wish to do evidence of design beneficence on all sides of us There seems to me too much misery in the world I can not persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars expressing his particular revulsion at the Ichneumonidae family of parasitic wasps that lay their eggs in the larvae and pupae of other insects so that their parasitoid young have a ready source of food He therefore could not believe in the necessity of design but rather than attributing the wonders of the universe to brute force was inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws with the details whether good or bad left to the working out of what we may call chance Not that this notion at all satisfies me I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton referring to Isaac Newton |
Darwin s brother Erasmus reported on 23 November that their cousin Henry Holland was reading the book and in a dreadful state of indecision sure that explaining the eye would be utterly impossible but after reading it he hummed hawed perhaps it was partly conceivable Erasmus himself thought it the most interesting book I ever read and sent a copy to his old flame Miss Harriet Martineau who at 58 was still reviewing from her home in the Lake District Martineau sent her thanks adding that she had previously praised the quality conduct of your brother s mind but it is an unspeakable satisfaction to see here the full manifestation of its earnestness simplicity its sagacity its industry the patient power by w it has collected such a mass of facts to transmute them by such sagacious treatment into such portentious knowledge I sh much like to know how large a proportion of our scientific men believe he has found a sound road |
Writing to her fellow Malthusian and atheist George Holyoake she enthused What a book it is overthrowing if true revealed Religion on the one hand Natural as far as Final Causes Design are concerned on the other The range mass of knowledge take away one s breath To Fanny Wedgwood she wrote I rather regret that CD went out of his way two or three times to speak of The Creator in the popular sense of the First Cause His subject is the Origin of Species not the origin of Organisation it seems a needless mischief to have opened the latter speculation at all There now I have delivered my mind |