الفهرس 
Chapter 1: Definition of theory of mindOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Theory of mind (TOM) is an awareness of and ability to predict mental states to one self and to the others. It is the understanding that beside the physical world, there is a mental one consisting of thoughts, beliefs, ideas and emotions. Even though these things are intangible and invisible, they can be explained, inferred or predicted, because they are influenced by actions, people and events in the physical world. Moreover, they in turn impact the physical world.
An understanding of the existence of ideas and emotions, how they are influenced and how they in turn influence behavior is essential in order to understand human behavior and to interact with others.
It is most often described as “The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes” and usually develops in typical children by four or five years old. It is considered a high order cognitive feat.
TOM has been divided by many researchers into affective TOM and cognitive TOM. Affective TOM is the awareness of and ability to infer emotions, while cognitive TOM is the awareness of and ability to infer beliefs and knowledge. Also, it can be divided into intrapersonal TOM which is concerned with one’s own mental states and interpersonal (social) TOM which concerned with the mental states of others .
Three main theories have been offered as explanations for the development of children’s mentalistic understanding, Theory-Theory, Modulatory theory and simulation theory.
The explanation of TOM in terms of Theory- Theory depends on the distinction between our beliefs and concepts about the physical world, which may be called ”primary representations” and our beliefs about other people’s mental states (such as their beliefs and desires) called ”second order representations” or ”meta representations.
In contrast, modularity theorists postulated the acquisition through neurological maturation of a succession of domain-specific and modular mechanisms for dealing with agents versus non-agent objects.
According to the Simulation approach, children become able to compute the mental states of other people through a kind of role taking or simulation process. What develops is the ability to make increasingly accurate simulations of this kind.
The first signs of a developing TOM are precursor skills which include, establishing joint attention, imitation, pretend play and emotion recognition.TOM is influenced by, contributes to and develops in conjunction with academic performance, social skills, language and cognition.
TOM development should therefore be understood within the broader context of a child’s overall social, emotional and cognitive development. As TOM research has expanded, the role of TOM in all of these areas has been a point of interest to psychologists and to speech language pathologists (SLPs(.
Several methods have been used to assess the theory of mind such as:
False belief tasks e.g. Sally and Anne task and Smarties task.
Theory of mind test.
Theory of mind assessment scale.
Theory of mind task battery.
The Animated Theory of Mind Inventory for Children (ATOMIC).
The Theory of Mind Inventory.
The development of TOM ability has important consequences for children’s social communication, interactions and behavior for example; in conversations, negotiations, games and friendships which involve interpersonal sensitivity in real social settings including home, school and the work environment.
Research on theory of mind led to the view that mentalizing abilities are subserved by dedicated mechanisms that can (in some cases) be impaired while general cognitive function remains largely intact.
Neuroimaging research has supported this view, demonstrating specific brain regions consistently engaged during theory of mind tasks. Early positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research on theory of mind, using verbal and pictorial story comprehension tasks, revealed increased levels of blood oxygen and glucose uptake in a small, but consistent group of brain regions:
- Left and right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).
- Medial parietal cortex (precuneus, PC).
- More anterior regions of the superior temporal sulcus (STS), down to the temporal poles.
- Sometimes amygdale is identified.
TOM fails to develop in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and in cases of severely restricted linguistic inputs e.g. deaf children of non-signing parents.
TOM deficits also occur in many other disorders including schizophrenia , bipolar affective disorder ,mental retardation , congenital blindness , attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) , certain types of language impairment e.g. SLI and dementia
Many strategies are put for enhancement of theory of mind and have fruitful encouraging role in TOM development as joint attention training, narrative skills training, TOM-related tasks training and language therapy.
Recently, researchers have begun to emphasize joint attention training for children with impaired joint attention especially those with autism due to its relationship to the development of higher social understanding (TOM), language and pretend play.