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Annotated Bibliography

Ferguson, Heather J., et al. “3 Social Interaction in Early and Middle Childhood: The Role of Theory of
Mind.” The Cognitive Basis of Social Interaction across the Lifespan, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2021, pp. 47–171. , accessed 15 Sept. 2023.

This journal summarizes the importance of human interaction in the different

developmental stages of children and how their surroundings can impact their social competence.

Theory of Mind is a necessary and vital part of having successful relationships. This chapter

hones in on how human social interactive abilities change specifically within the early/middle

childhood years and how underlying defense mechanisms, environmental triggers, and other

forms of social phenomena occur during these crucial years when theory of Mind is changing so

fast. It’s unique in the fact that it not only discusses the developmental process of Theory of

Mind, but also explores how different social situations that children could be exposed to affects

their social competence. It discusses parent-child interactions, siblings, classmates, and even

begins to explore prosocial behavior. I think this source will be extremely helpful for my

research paper and I will use a lot of information from it because it discusses specifically the

timeline that I’m following and a similar topic. It is a credible and reliable source. It is peer

reviewed and from and I think it related the most to my paper directly than any of my other

sources.

Mari, Magali. “How Cues to Social Categorization Impact Children’s Inferences about Social
Categories.” Acta Psychologica, North-Holland, 16 Aug. 2022,
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691822002220?via%3Dihub. , accessed 15
Sept. 2023.
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Social categorization involves two processes. Children first seek properties or traits that

they can categorize individuals as, the secondly, they can make assumptions and inferences

about these different categories. Between 3 to 9 months of life, children begin to show

preferences and categorization abilities. When developing, children learn to pick up on linguistic

cues, visual cues, and behavioral cues. This directly relates to my own research paper on the

Theory of Mind and helps to explain the “why” we discriminate to others on different levels of

the Theory of Mind steps. Those with higher social awareness and are able to pick up on social

cues tend to communicate better with others and have stigmas against those who don’t perform

as well. The first four peer reviewed works that I chose for this project are more Theory of Mind

based, while these last two are more centered around human linguistics and the formulation of

successful interactions among humans. I think that these articles will help guide my paper to

being more well rounded and have a better base to build off of because I will be able to provide

insight into all aspects of social cognition. This is a reliable source and I think it will be useful in

my research paper.

Peterson, Candida C., et al. “The mind behind the message: Advancing theory-of-mind scales for
typically developing children, and those with deafness, autism, or asperger syndrome.” Child
Development, vol. 83, no. 2, 2012, pp. 469–485, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-
8624.2011.01728.x. , accessed 15 Sept. 2023.

“Theory of Mind is the explicit understanding of how human behavior is governed by

mental states of belief, intention, memory, and desire.” My entire project is based on the

relationship between social interaction and Theory of Mind and answering the question “how

important is it?” This article discusses the development process of Theory of Mind that occurs

most rapidly from the ages of 2-6 and how if that development is delayed, it is a potential sign of
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social incompetence or mental disabilities. There was a scale chart developed with 5 steps, each

for a different mental milestone for the development of social cognition. The tasks that qualify

movement on the scale include diverse desires, beliefs, knowledge access, false belief, and

hidden emotion. They used the Wellman and Liu (2004) five item ToM Scale in order to see

when children pick up on things such as sarcasm and irony (not previously a part of scale). They

chose specifically children from 3-12 years old with developmental issues, deafness, autism, or

asperger syndrome in order to test the reliability of the scale used to assess cognition growth.

Their findings showed that sarcasm was a statistically reliable potential sixth step to be added to

Wellman and Liu’s 5-step ToM scale. They also found that children with no mental or verbal

deficits mastered the Theory of Mind steps ahead of the disabled groups but all groups, even

nondisabled showed that the sarcasm task was challenging up until the 9 year old groups. This

showed the sensitivity of the previous scale. This article is useful in my own personal research

because it focuses on the development of children through the different developmental stages

and discusses how essential Theory of Mind is to communication. By including the aspect of

using children with deafness, autism, and asperger syndrome it also opened the door for more

discussion which will be useful within my own research paper. I think that this source is credible

and it is a peer reviewed journal. It doesn’t directly relate to my project as much as I had hoped

but I think I will still find it to be useful.

RAMSCAR, Michael. “How children learn to communicate discriminatively.” Journal of Child

Language, vol. 48, no. 5, 16 June 2021, pp. 984–1022,
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000921000544. , accessed 14 Sept. 2023.

The communication theory describes how “discriminative learning theory offers an

alternative perspective on the way that semantic cues are conditioned into communicative
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codes.” This article within the Journal of Child Language challenges the traditional associative,

compositional approach and explores the idea that mastery of a language is much more intricate

and difficult than linguists realize. This article is vastly different from my other sources in the

sense that it doesn’t fully rely on the impact that the Theory of Mind has on communication, but

rather, describes what building blocks make up language. It discusses the phonemes, morphemes,

and finally how those make up words and sentences. It also explores the question of how do

children learn? One of the most important takeaways that I had from this article was the proposal

of “what is learned is not just a function of events that happen together, but also of events that

might have been expected to happen but they didn’t.” I will use this source in my essay to

provide more insight on what the word communication actually entails. It also will be useful

when explaining what “normal” and “abnormal” social behaviors are to help show the impact of

the Theory of Mind in social cognition. It is a reliable source and is peer reviewed but I don’t

think that it is my most valuable resource out of the six.

Schenider, Maude, et al. “Is Theory of Mind a Prerequisite for Social Interactions? A Study in Psychotic
Disorder.” Social Interactions in Psychosis, 2023,
file:///PsyMed_Schneider_Myin_MyinGermeys.pdf. Accessed 15 Sept. 2023.

This peer reviewed source was published in Psychological Medicine, 2020, Vol.50 (5),

pages 754-760 and it explores evidence that challenges the dominant idea that an impaired

capacity for Theory of Mind is the reasoning behind impairments in people with autism and

schizophrenia. This source is unique because it challenges another one of my sources findings

and relates to autism so I think it will be interesting to use and find information to provide myself

with more well-rounded ideas on the topics to put in my own paper. They conducted their
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research over three studies to see the correlation between Theory of Mind and social functioning

in people with no mental deficits, subjects with schizophrenia, and people with autism. They

found that their results were highly consistent across the board and there was no statistically

significant difference between them. These findings call into question the leading beliefs held by

the psychology community and suggest that Theory of Mind is not a sole reason for having/

lacking social competence, but rather shows that social cognition relies more heavily on simply

being exposed to more social interaction. This source is definitely my least credible source,

though it is peer reviewed. I think that it will be useful to my findings and I can use aspects of it

to challenge beliefs stated in my other sources.

Slaughter, Virginia, and Candida C. Peterson, 'How conversational input shapes theory of mind
development in infancy and early childhood', in Michael Siegal, and Luca Surian (eds), Access
to Language and Cognitive Development (Oxford, 2011; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Jan.
2012), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592722.003.0001, accessed 16 Sept. 2023.

This chapter of the book was specifically interesting because it discussed how parents,

and more specifically mothers, mental state talk can advance children’s ability to pass Theory of

Mind tasks. There appears to be a link to children emerging and progressing through Theory of

Mind faster when mothers tailor their conversations to promote critical thinking in their children.

More specifically, when mothers explain their thought process outloud to their children and tell

them “why” they’re doing things and encourage their children to do the same, that is when the

greatest amount of growth will occur. To study ToM (Theory of Mind), most researchers ask

questions or use puppets to assess the children. The children are asked what they see, what they

are thinking, what they are likely to do next, and how that makes them feel. This chapter is very
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interesting too because it shows the relationship that Theory of Mind has with different aspects

of language. There is a section on conversation, infants/ toddlers, mental states, and

communication disorders and how all of those play a role in theory of Mind. I think this book

will be very useful to my research and I will apply their use of the MMSII in my own research. I

think it is a credible source and I actually found it because it was a ‘suggested work’ from

another one of my sources.