The "Theory of mind" development in the context of the social cognition of deaf people

Abstract

The standard account of human social understanding is that we understand people’s behaviour in terms of their mental states. The ability to reason about mental states has been called a Theory of Mind (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). This “folk psychological” account comes in two major versions: ‘Theory’ Theory (Gopnik, Meltzoff, 1998) and ‘Simulation’ Theory (Davies & Stone, 1998). The two views differ with regard to the kind of psychological process used to go from observable behavior to mental state attributions. The kind of psychological process that are the prerequisites of Theory of Mind development might play a fundamental role in the social cognition of deaf people and its specific pattern thereof. The presentation will point out the main, as well as crucial factors, based on resent study results.