How The "curse Of Knowledge" Influences Theory Of Mind

Theory of Mind(ToM) is described as the ability to understand that others have minds that contain beliefs and desires different from one's own, a skill that is important to social interaction. False Belief Tasks were employed to measure the ToM of children who were from 3 to 5. It was revealed that three-year-old children repeatedly failed in traditional false belief tasks, but four-year-olds typically passed. Different explanations were put forward to the dramatic change of ToM development and different models were brought up to uncover how to accomplish false belief reasoning. One of the factors influencing false belief reasoning is the"curse of knowledge", which shows in both children and adult.Based on the ToMM-SP Model and previous relative researches, the classic"Sally-Anne"task was employed on adult participants to explore false belief reasoning process and how the"curse of knowledge"affects it. The main conclusions are as follows:Firstly, in adult's false belief reasoning, ToMM automatically inferred and generated false belief contents. Adult subjects responded more slowly to reality probes than to false belief probes, which revealed selecting an appropriate false belief by SP cost more time.Secondly, adult subjects presenting false belief information was compromised by the"curse of knowledge", which was not appeared in the encoding process but in holding the false belief information in mind to make judgments. The results suggested that participants integrated the false belief information and reality information and represented the relationships between false and reality in a way that allowed interference of reality. That was the way how the"curse of knowledge"affects false belief reasoning.