Brain development, experience, and the development of a representational theory of mind in preschoolers

社会世界的成功参与和谈判取决于拥有一种心理理论--理解他人的行为是由特殊的心理状态驱动的，如信念、知识、欲望和意图。尽管心理理论的根源可能出现在婴儿期，但世界各地的儿童在学龄前几年都经历了心理理论推理技能的显着发展。到目前为止，我们的工作重点是了解学龄前儿童大脑发展的哪些方面可能对他们在心理理论理解方面的显着变化起到重要作用。在这项工作中，我们使用脑电(EEG)记录发现，心理发展理论与内侧额叶和顶叶特定区域的发展有关。现在，我们希望继续这项工作，以了解大脑区域的成熟时间表是如何通过经验塑造的，这些区域对心理理论至关重要。我们对这个问题的第一个方法是考察那些已知的影响心理理论发展的经历，包括为儿童提供心理理论培训，以及与父母谈论心理理论概念的机会，是否也影响对心理理论重要的大脑区域的功能发育。我们的第二个方法是看看对心理理论重要的大脑发育是否与神经认知过程有关，这些过程被认为是帮助学龄前儿童利用他们的经验来发展心理理论推理技能的。如果我们成功了，这些发现将首次表明，大脑发育对于对他人精神状态进行抽象推理至关重要，可能会受到相对微妙的经验因素的影响。更广泛地说，我们可能会展示生物因素和经验因素如何共同作用，塑造认知发展的轨迹和时间表。我们希望这些发现将为心理推理理论似乎受到损害的精神障碍的神经学基础提供新的视角，包括自闭症、抑郁症和精神分裂症。

Successful engagement and negotiation of the social world rests on having a theory of mind -- an understanding that others' behavior is motivated by idiosyncratic mental states such as beliefs, knowledge, desires, and intention. Although the roots of theory of mind may be present in infancy children all over the world go through striking developments in their theory of mind reasoning skills during the preschool years. Our work to date has been focused on understanding what aspects of preschoolers' brain development might be important for their remarkable changes in theory of mind understanding. In that work, we used electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings to discover that theory of mind development is associated with developments in specific regions of the medial frontal lobe and the parietal lobe. Now, we hope to continue this work to learn about how the maturational timetable of the brain areas that are important for theory of mind might be shaped by experience. Our first approach to this question involves examining whether the experiences that are known to affect theory of mind development, including providing children with theory of mind training and opportunities to talk about theory of mind concepts with parents, also affect the functional development of the brain areas that are important for theory of mind. Our second approach is to look at whether the brain developments that are important for theory of mind are related to the neurocognitive processes that have been suggested to help preschoolers use their experience to develop theory of mind reasoning skills. If we are successful, these findings will show for the first time that the brain developments that are critical for abstract reasoning about others mental states can be affected by relatively subtle experiential factors. More generally, we may show how biological and experiential factors work together to shape the trajectory and timetable of cognitive developments. We hope that these findings will provide new perspectives on the neurological bases of disorders in which theory of mind reasoning appears to be impaired, including autism, depression, and schizophrenia.