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

成功地参与和协商社会世界取决于有一个心理理论-理解他人的行为是由特殊的心理状态，如信仰，知识，欲望和意图。虽然心理理论的根源可能存在于婴儿期，但世界各地的儿童在学龄前阶段经历了心理理论推理技能的惊人发展。迄今为止，我们的工作一直集中在了解学龄前儿童大脑发育的哪些方面可能对他们在心理理论理解方面的显着变化很重要。在这项工作中，我们使用脑电图（EEG）记录发现，心理理论的发展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，以了解对心理理论很重要的大脑区域的成熟时间表是如何被经验塑造的。我们对这个问题的第一个方法是研究已知会影响心理理论发展的经验，包括为儿童提供心理理论训练和与父母谈论心理理论概念的机会，是否也会影响对心理理论重要的大脑区域的功能发展。我们的第二种方法是研究对心理理论很重要的大脑发育是否与神经认知过程有关，神经认知过程被认为可以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。如果我们成功的话，这些发现将首次表明，对其他精神状态进行抽象推理至关重要的大脑发育可以受到相对微妙的经验因素的影响。更一般地说，我们可以展示生物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理论推理受损的疾病（包括自闭症、抑郁症和精神分裂症）的神经学基础提供新的视角。

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.