Language makes us capable of uniquely human social cognitive understandings. We are the only species that reflects on our past and future (Fivush, 2011). The essence of being human, as I highlighted at the beginning of this chapter, is that we effortlessly transport ourselves into each other’s heads, decoding what people are thinking from their own point of view. How do children learn they have an ongoing life history? When do we fully grasp that “other minds” are different from our own?

Autobiographical memories refer to reflecting on our life histories: from our earliest memories at age 3 or 4, to that incredible experience we had at work last week. Children’s understanding that they have a unique autobiography is scaffolded through a specific kind of talk. Caregivers reminisce with young children: “Remember going on a train to visit Grandma?” “What did we do at the beach last week?” These past-talk conversations are teaching a lesson: “You have a past and future. You are an enduring self.”

Past-talk conversations typically begin with parents doing the “remembering” when children first begin to speak (Harley & Reese, 1999). Then, children become partners in these mutual stories, and finally, at age 4 or 5, initiate past-talk conversations on their own (Nelson & Fivush, 2004). Listen to this vivid autobiographical memory produced by a 6-year-old:

INTERVIEWER TO 6-YEAR-OLD: Can you tell me about the ballet recital?

CHILD: It was driving me crazy.

INTERVIEWER: Really?

CHILD: Yes, I was so scared because I didn’t know any of the people and I couldn’t see mom and dad. They were way on top of the audience. . . . Ummm, we were on a slippery surface and we all did “Where the Wild Things Are” and we . . . Mine had horns sticking out of it . . . And I had baggy pants.

(adapted from Nelson & Fivush, 2004)

As this girl reaches adolescence, she will link these kinds of memories to each other, and construct a timeline of her life (Habermas, Negele, & Mayer, 2010; Chen, McAnally, & Reese, 2013). By about age 16, she will use these events to reflect on her enduring personality (“This is the kind of person I am, as shown by how I felt at age 4 or 5 or 9”). Then she will have achieved that Eriksonian milestone—an identity to carry through life (more about this in Chapter 10).

Caregivers can help stimulate autobiographical memory by sensitively asking questions about exciting experiences they shared with their child (Valentino and others, 2014). (“Wasn’t the Circus amazing! What did you like best?”) Moreover, the quality of our teenage autobiographical memories vary depending on the loving past talk experiences we receive. In one study, young teens who produced rich personal autobiographies were apt to report close, trusting relationships with their mothers (Bosmans and others, 2013). Conversely, overly general autobiographical memories (“I used to go shopping”) rather than recalling specific events (“I remember how I went to Green Hills Mall on that Tuesday with my friends”) can be a symptom of an unhappy life (Valentino and others, 2014). In another study, having been abused, plus an inability to recall details about one’s past, was linked to a young teen’s experiencing depression down the road (Stange and others, 2013).

The most chilling example of this autobiographical memory failure (Freud might label it repression) occurred when researchers tested children who were removed from an abusive home. If a parent was insecurely attached, a child either was apt to make false statements about what took place that day or to deny remembering anything about the traumatic event (Melinder and others, 2013).

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The take-home message is that having a personal autobiography (or full sense of self) is taught through responsive parent–child encounters. As the sociologist George Herbert Mead suggested a century ago by using different terminology, or as Vygotsky implied in a different context in this chapter, relationships are the medium that teach us to be a self.

Moreover, when researchers train parents in the rich reminiscence styles described above, they find that past-talk conversations enhance the child’s ability to relate to other minds (Taumoepeau & Reese, 2013). When does this vital mindreading ability really lock in?

Listen to 3-year-olds having a conversation, and it’s as if you are hearing monologues, or mental ships passing in the night. Around age 4 or 5, children start relating in a give-and-take way. They have reached that landmark called theory of mind. Developmentalists have a creative procedure to demonstrate this milestone—the false-belief task.

With a friend and a young child, see if you can perform this classic theory of mind task in Figure 5.6 (Wimmer & Perner, 1983). Hide a toy in a place (location A) while the child and your friend watch. Then, have your friend leave the room. Once she is gone, move the toy to another hiding place (location B). Next, ask the child where your friend will look for the toy when she returns. If the child is under age 4, he will typically answer the second hiding place (location B), even though your friend could not possibly know the toy has been moved. It’s as if the child doesn’t grasp the fact that what he observed can’t be in your friend’s head, too.

What Are the Consequences and Roots of Theory of Mind?

Having a theory of mind is not only vital to having a real conversation; it is crucial to convincing someone to do what you say. Researchers asked children to persuade a puppet to do something aversive, either eat broccoli or brush its teeth. Even controlling for verbal abilities, the number of arguments a given boy or girl made was linked to advanced theory of mind (Slaughter, Peterson, & Moore, 2013).

Theory of mind is essential to understanding people may not have your best interests at heart. One developmentalist had children play a game with “Mean Monkey,” a puppet the experimenter controlled (Peskin, 1992). Beforehand, the researcher had asked the children which sticker they wanted. Then, she had Mean Monkey pick each child’s favorite choice. Most 4-year-olds figured out how to play the game and told Mean Monkey the opposite of what they wanted. Three-year-olds never caught on. They always pointed to their favorite sticker and got the “yucky” one instead.

A remark from one of my students brings home the real-world message of this research. She commented that her 4-year-old nephew had reached the stage where he was beginning to tell lies. Under age 4, children don’t fully have the mental abilities to understand that their parents don’t know the thoughts in their head. So lying is an important cognitive advance! (See Evans, Xu, & Lee, 2011.)

The false-belief studies, conducted during the last decades of the twentieth century, convinced developmentalists that Piaget’s ideas about preoperational egocentrism were wrong. Although theory-of-mind abilities mature well into later childhood (Devine & Hughes, 2013) and our teens (Dumontheil, Apperly, & Blakemore, 2010; Lagattuta, Sayfan, & Blattman, 2010; Samson & Apperly, 2010), remember that children first grasp the principle that there are other minds out there, during the first 6 months of life!

Do Individual Children (and Adults) Differ in Theory of Mind?

While most preschoolers pass theory-of-mind tasks at around 4 or 5, perhaps because parent–child disagreements are less acceptable in collectivist societies, children in these cultures take a bit longer to grasp the idea that people have conflicting opinions than do Western 4-year-olds (Shahaeian and others, 2011; see also Table 5.7 on page 162 for some fascinating neural findings related to theory of mind and the collectivist/individualistic distinction).

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Conversely, because they have so much hands-on experience in colliding (meaning arguing) with other minds—”Hey, I want that toy!” “No, I do!”—Western preschoolers with brothers and sisters tend to pass theory-of-mind tasks at somewhat younger ages than only children do (McAlister & Peterson, 2013).

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Bilingual preschoolers—because they must sensitively switch between languages, depending on their conversational partner—also reach this social milestone earlier than the typical child (Adi-Japha, Berberich-Artzi, & Libnawi, 2010; Chertkow and others, 2010; Cushen & Wiley, 2011). So do preschoolers who are emotionally reactive and, possibly, more attuned to social cues (Lane and others, 2013), and boys and girls with parents who talk about other people’s mental states from a very young age (Lundy, 2013; Pavarini, de Hollanda Souza, & Hawk, 2013).

My discussion implies that interpersonal or social skills are intimately involved in grasping theory-of-mind tasks. So it comes as no surprise that the core condition associated with “mind-blindness”—difficulties with theory of mind—is autism, that well-known impairment in the ability to socially relate (Baron-Cohen, 1999; Steele, Joseph, & Tager-Flusberg, 2003). As autism spectrum disorders—the current umbrella name encompassing Asperger’s syndrome and autism—are such compelling contemporary concerns, let’s end this chapter by outlining what these devastating conditions are like.

Autism spectrum disorders are poster-child diseases for the devastation that occurs when our human capacity to relate to other minds is impaired. In the next chapter, I’ll focus directly on charting children’s relationships (and self-awareness), as I explore socioemotional development during the childhood years.

Question 5.16

This past-talk conversation will help stimulate Madison’s autobiographical memory.

Question 5.17

1. He’s having a real give-and-take conversation with you.

2. He realizes that if you weren’t there, you can’t know what’s gone on—and tries to explain to you what happened while you were absent.

3. When he has done something he shouldn’t do, he is likely to lie.

4. He’s learning to read.

d

Question 5.18

Autism spectrum disorders are becoming more prevalent, and we are not making great progress in determining their causes.