Theory of Mind

Theory of Mind (TOM) is the term coined by Premack and Woodruff (1978). The milestone paper was titled "Do chimpanzees have a theory of mind?". TOM is the cognitive capability of understanding other's mind. TOM triggered various issues in the domain of human cognitive development. Among them, there is a task called "false-belief task" invented by H. Wimmer and J. Perner in 1983. Children see a scene in which a character, Maxi, puts chocolate in a drawer and goes away. While he is away, his mother takes a bit of chocolate for cooking and then puts it somewhere else and goes out. Then Maxi comes back, and the experimenter asks: "Where will Maxi look for the chocolate?". Children of 3 years old predicted that Maxi could look for the chocolate where his mother has put it. Children over 5 predicted that Maxi tried to find it in the original place, the drawer. There is a clear difference in the cognitive ability of understanding other's belief at the age of around 4 years old. Whether nonhuman animals have TOM or not is a controversial one. Maybe not. This is another cognitive capability of uniquely human.