Mind: Overview and Proposed Experiment Essay

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39). However, because of translating different cultural concepts, cross-cultural studies such as those of the Baka can prove problematic: "How can one know whether similar behaviors have similar meaning across cultures capacity," when designing experiments? (Gauvain 1998, p.40). It is particularly difficult to elicit responses regarding what a subject things 'another' feels. Thus cross-cultural definitions of a theory of mind are difficult to determine, given that the child's experience is culturally marked by languages and concepts from the start of life. Lillard contends that it is simply not tenuous to claim that the child has core understandings about other people that exist outside of culture, given the degree to which language, manners, rituals, and folk psychological understandings of others are shaped by cultural constraints. (Lillard 1998, p. 44).

Specifically regarding her inquiry about 'folk' psychological understanding in cultures, Angelina Lillard refers to the apparent tendency in other cultures to attribute outside forces, like spirits or witches, as the source of differences in behavior rather than minds. "The crucial issue is how much of folk psychology is the encapsulated product of theorizing within the child and how...much is folk psychology like manners, resulting from culture's often capricious-seeming dictates, combined with the child's developmental level, and how much is it like Piagetian conservation?" (Lillard 1998, p. 44).

Differences in children's experience with schooling and language and their apparent effect on a theory of mind further support Lillard's notion, even if they do not 'prove' her contention (Gauvain 1998, p.40).

Some might counter that, although a theory of mind is not synonymous with intelligence, it could develop in consort with other intellectual activities, and much like intelligence is shaped by a variety of forces but there is still some innate 'mindful' quality. On the other hand, analogizing a theory of mind to intelligence may be even thornier, given whether there is a general cross-cultural definition of intelligence is itself in contention.

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Critics of Lillard would no doubt point out that empathy and understanding the emotions of others is affected by biology -- teenagers may be more apt to see hostility in faces than their adult counterparts, for example. To specifically test the universality of a theory of mind, using the question of developmental stages might be illuminated through the following. First, a cross-cultural selection of individuals from a variety, or two different (low or high-context, for example) cultural backgrounds should be pooled. The groups could include children below the age of three, regarded as the pre-'theory of mind' period, children from the three to five-year-old age group, and children from five to seven years of age. The children would be shown a cartoon, where a boy or girl hides a toy, and then the mother of the child comes into the room. The child would be prompted if the mother knows where the hidden toy may be. Then the child would be asked to hide a toy 'in real life' while the test examiner was not present. After the examiner entered the room, he or she would ask the child if he knew where the toy might be. A theory of mind necessitates the knowledge that certain aspects of knowledge are concealed to others, and can assemble the life history of the other individual.

Then, the data would be analyzed to see firstly if a theory of mind was present in both groups, and if there was any difference in degree or at what age this theory manifested itself. Sufficient cross-cultural discrepancies would suggest that certain aspects of the theory of mind are more culturally bound, while a strong coherence would suggest that a theory of mind is more developmentally based, rather than culturally constructed.

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