Sally-Anne test
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The Sally-Anne test is a psychological test, used in developmental psychology to measure a person's social cognitive ability to attribute false beliefs to others (Wimmer & Perner, 1983). In 1988, Leslie and Frith repeated the experiment with human actors (rather than dolls) and found similar results.
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[edit] Test description
The experimenter uses two dolls, "Sally" and "Anne". Sally has a basket; Anne has a box. Experimenters show their subjects (usually children) a simple skit, in which Sally puts a marble in her basket and then leaves the scene. While Sally is away and cannot watch, Anne takes the marble out of Sally's basket and puts it into her box. Sally then returns and the children are asked where they think she will look for her marble. Children are said to "pass" the test if they understand that Sally will most likely look inside her basket before realizing that her marble isn't there.
Normal children under the age of four, along with most autistic children (of all ages), will answer "Anne's box," seemingly unaware that Sally does not know her marble has been moved.
[edit] Interpretation
Children who pass the test (presumably) understand that there are two different sets of beliefs:
- their own beliefs, based on what they have personally seen, heard, remembered, imagined, reasoned, etc., and
- the beliefs of others, based on what they have seen, heard, etc..
Children who pass this test are believed to have the following mental capacities:
- to recognize that other people have perceptions/feelings/beliefs/thoughts/etc. different from their own;
- to recognize that others may not know everything they themselves know, and vice versa;
- to "mind-read" (or "mind-guess") other people's thoughts and feelings;
- and to predict (or even interfere with) other people's third-party relationships.
Those children who fail the test are said by some psychologists to lack a "theory of mind." (In this context, "mind" refers to psychological processes such as perception, belief, thought, or memory.) However, failing the Sally-Anne test does not mean that an individual has no awareness of mental states: great apes and very young children, who typically fail the test, nonetheless show other sophisticated social behaviors (such as empathy).
[edit] Great apes and other monkeys
Since other great apes are not known to have a human-like theory of mind, it is assumed that it evolved after our ancestors diverged from other great apes. Suddendorf has suggested that this occurred with H. erectus (dating from 1.8 mya). Current research has failed, however, to disprove conclusively a theory of mind in other great apes and some new world monkeys outside the family of great apes, as for example the capuchin monkeys.
[edit] Criticism
Strictly speaking, the scenario presented in the test does not give sufficient information to determine Sally's expectations about the location of the marble. For example, it is not said whether Sally and Anne had previously discussed possible locations for the marble. Thus "I don't know" is, in a sense, the most correct answer.
A positive answer can be reached only by making assumptions about the unstated parts of the situation. There are many possible sets of assumptions that could be made, and the small number of likely answers means that the test cannot adequately distinguish between many of the possible assumptions. Furthermore, the categorisation of responses into "passes" and "failures" throws away most of that information. There are several ways to pass, and vastly more ways to fail.
These problems make the test of limited use as a diagnostic tool. The standard interpretation of the test identifies a particular stage in the most common pattern of development of social understanding, but it is misleading when applied to subjects who are not following the standard pattern. This is of particular concern with autistics, who are commonly diagnosed as lacking a theory of mind on the basis of "failing" the test.
A parody from the autistic point of view, presenting the ability to pass the Sally-Anne test (and therefore to engage in lying and deception) as an aberration peculiar to neurotypicals, can be found here. (It should be noted that lying and deceit are possible without a theory of mind; behaviorism and associative learning can describe some kinds of deceit as learned responses to avoid trouble, for example when a young child caught with her hand in a cookie jar tries to deny that she is stealing cookies. The girl tries to give an answer which will escape punishment, but because she still lacks theory of mind she has difficulty realizing that her mother plainly knows that she is lying.)
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- Suddendorf, T., & Whiten, A. (2001). "Mental evolution and development: evidence for secondary representation in children, great apes and other animals." Psychological Bulletin, 629-650.
