Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

Imagine sitting down with a fortune-teller to find out your future. The fortune-teller can determine intimate details about your life and personality. As they talk to you about your future, you feel disarmed by their knowledge and wonder if their predictions may come true. What is really going on behind the crystal ball? How does the fortune-teller know so much about you? The answer is theory of mind. This term refers to people’s abilities to recognize and comprehend the mental states of others. Many people—such as fortune-tellers—capitalize on their ability to “read” other people and pinpoint their motivations. As the prefrontal cortex in children develops, so does their theory of mind. By the age of four, neurotypical children can pass the false-belief test. This experiment asks children to look inside a candy box filled with pennies. They are then asked what others might believe is inside the box. Younger children usually say pennies. They are unable to separate their own experiences from the experiences of others. However, by age four, most children can recognize that others would assume the box would be filled with candies because they have not looked inside.