Mark A Sabbagh

Queen's University | QueensU · Department of Psychology

Young children learn word-referent links in cross-situational learning paradigms despite uncertainty as to a given word’s correct referent on individual exposures. However, the semantic status of these word-referent links is unknown. Here, we used a novel event-related potential (ERP) testing approach to investigate whether children showed electrop...

Previous event-related potential (ERP) studies reported larger N170, P3, and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes to sexual than nonsexual stimuli. These ERPs may not be specifically sensitive to processing sexual cues, however, because the sexual stimuli included information beyond sexual cues (e.g., faces, bodies, social interaction) to a gre...

Theory of mind (ToM) – the understanding that others’ behaviours are connected with internal mental states – is an important part of everyday social cognition. There is increasing behavioral evidence that ToM reasoning can be affected by mood. To gain insight into the ways sad mood may affect the underlying mechanisms of ToM reasoning, we recorded...

An important aspect of executive functioning is the ability to flexibly switch between behavioral rules. This study explored how considering the multidimensionality of objects affects behavioral rule switching in 3‐year‐old children. In Study 1 (N = 40), children who participated in a brief game separating and aggregating an object’s dimensions (i....

We investigated whether children's inhibitory control (IC) is associated with their ability to produce irregular past tense verb forms as well as learn from corrective feedback following overregularization errors. Forty-eight 3;6 to 4;5 year old children were tested on the irregular past tense and provided with adult corrective input via models of...

We investigated whether children’s inhibitory control (IC) is associated with their ability to produce irregular verb forms as well as learn from corrective feedback following over-regularization errors. Forty-eight 3.5 to 4.5 year old children were tested on the irregular past tense and provided with adult corrective input via mod els of correct u...

The Reading the Mind in the Eyes task (RMET; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001) is commonly used to assess theory of mind abilities in adults. In the task, participants pair one of four mental state descriptors with a picture of the eye region of a face. The items have varying emotional valence, and nearly 100 studies have examin...

Children's explicit theory of mind (ToM) understandings change over early childhood. We examined whether there is longitudinal stability in the neurobiological bases of ToM across this time period. A previous study found that source-localized resting EEG alpha attributable to the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and right temporoparietal jun...

Background Some studies find that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) experience difficulties in disengaging their attention from one stimulus and shifting to another, but findings are mixed. It is possible that instead of being a domain-general characteristic of ASD, the attentional differences may be affected by participants’ inheren...

Children of depressed mothers show substantial social impairment, which increases their risk for developing depression. Theory of mind understanding forms the basis of social functioning, and is impaired in children of currently depressed mothers. Models of risk emphasize that a history of any maternal depression confers risk to later psychopatholo...

Background: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have reduced interest in human faces and atypical event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to face stimuli, suggesting that face processing may be a functional marker of ASD susceptibility. Method: This report explored the visual processing of individuals with ASD (n = 50) compare...

Introduction: According to the interpersonal model of depression, individuals with depression engage in excessive reassurance-seeking (ERS) about others’ beliefs regarding their self-worth, which can ultimately result in interpersonal rejection. We present the novel hypothesis that maladaptive ERS behaviors in depression may be driven by difficulti...

The current study is the first to examine the relation of childhood abuse and neglect history to theory of mind decoding accuracy as moderated by depression. Fifty-five young adults with current or lifetime unipolar depression diagnosis and 70 never-depressed young adults completed the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes task,' (RMET). Childhood emotiona...

In this brief editorial, we discuss the origins of this special issue and a couple ways in which we hope that these findings will 1) improve our understanding of implicit false belief understanding and 2) improve some aspects of scientific practice in our field more broadly.

Everyday understanding of the social world relies, at least in part, on having a theory of mind—an understanding of how mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions cause human behavior. After introducing the core conceptual distinctions to frame discussion of the issues, we review a wide range of literature pertaining to the development...

Much of the current literature on selective social learning focuses on the external factors that trigger children’s selectivity. In this chapter, we review behavioral, eye-tracking, and electrophysiological evidence for how children selectively learn words—what the internal processes are that enable them to block learning when they doubt the episte...

Everyday understanding of the social world relies, at least in part, on having a theory of mind—an understanding of how mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions cause human behavior. After introducing the core conceptual distinctions to frame discussion of the issues, we review a wide range of literature pertaining to the development...

Developmental theorists have struggled with defining the relations among biology, psychology, and sociocultural context, often reducing psychological functions of a person to either biological functioning or the role of sociocultural context - nature or nurture - and considering each area of human development separately. New Perspectives on Human D...

Although we know much about the conditions under which children demonstrate selective social learning, we have a limited understanding of the cognitive mechanisms by which children’s selectivity manifests. Here, we report findings from a brain electrophysiological (ERP) study designed to determine the extent to which words presented by ignorant spe...

Theory of mind-the ability to decode and reason about others' mental states-is a universal human skill and forms the basis of social cognition. Theory of mind accuracy is impaired in clinical conditions evidencing social impairment, including major depressive disorder. The current study is a preliminary investigation of the association of polymorph...

Supporting Data set for Genes and Theory of Mind Analyses. (SAV)

Although we can support Heyes' call for more research on mechanisms, we disagree that the problem has been ignored as Heyes suggests. We also doubt that basic learning mechanisms are alone sufficient to account for the broad range of findings in the selective social learning literature. Although phylogenetically shared learning mechanisms must supp...

Children's theory of mind (ToM) is typically measured with laboratory assessments of performance. Although these measures have generated a wealth of informative data concerning developmental progressions in ToM, they may be less useful as the sole source of information about individual differences in ToM and their relation to other facets of develo...

How does experience influence children’s acquisition of word meanings? In this chapter, the authors discuss the evidence from two bodies of literature that take different perspectives to answer this question. First, they review evidence from the “experience” literature, which has demonstrated that different experiential factors (e.g., differences i...

Although it has been argued that the structure of executive function (EF) may change developmentally, there is little empirical research to examine this view in middle childhood and adolescence. The main objective of this study was to examine developmental changes in the component structure of EF in a large sample (N = 457) of 7-15 year olds. Parti...

This special issue was motivated by the recent, wide-ranging interest in the development of children's selective social learning. Human beings have a far-reaching dependence on others for information, and the focus of this issue is on the processes by which children selectively and intelligently learn from others. It showcases some of the finest cu...

How does experience influence children’s acquisition of word meanings? In this chapter, the authors discuss the evidence from two bodies of literature that take different perspectives to answer this question. First, they review evidence from the “experience” literature, which has demonstrated that different experiential factors (e.g., differences i...

Twenty-four 3.5-year-old children who initially showed poor performance on false-belief tasks participated in a training protocol designed to promote performance on these tasks. Our aim was to determine whether the extent to which children benefited from training was predicted by their performance on a battery of executive functioning tasks. Findin...

We investigate whether preschoolers' word learning is selectively attuned to learning word-referent links that they expect will be relevant to their everyday communicative contexts. In two studies, 4-year-olds were taught the name of an unfamiliar toy that they were told was purchased either nearby or faraway. Children's memory for the link was ass...

Individual differences in preschoolers' understanding that human action is caused by internal mental states, or representational theory of mind (RTM), are heritable, as are developmental disorders such as autism in which RTM is particularly impaired. We investigated whether polymorphisms of genes affecting dopamine (DA) utilization and metabolism c...

ABSTRACT Three- and four-year-olds (N = 144) were introduced to novel labels by an English speaker and a foreign speaker (of Nordish, a made-up language), and were asked to endorse one of the speaker's labels. Monolingual English-speaking children were compared to bilingual children and English-speaking children who were regularly exposed to a lang...

Mood affects social cognition and "theory of mind", such that people in a persistent negative mood (i.e., dysphoria) have enhanced abilities at making subtle judgements about others' mental states. Theorists have argued that this hypersensitivity to subtle social cues may have adaptive significance in terms of solving interpersonal problems and/or...

Prominent theories of preschoolers' theory of mind development have included a central role for changing or adapting existing conceptual structures in response to experiences. Because of the relatively protracted timetable of theory of mind development, it has been difficult to test this assumption about the role of adaptation directly. To gain evi...

A significant clinical feature of depression involves difficulties in social functioning. At the foundation of these difficulties may lie alterations in “theory of mind” reasoning—the ability to decode others' mental states. Participants included 124 undergraduates who participated in a theory of mind task that involved attributing emotion states (...

Individuals with mild depression show an enhanced ability to read or “decode” others' mental states. The goal of the present study was to investigate whether this pattern of performance is related specifically to the pathology of depression or whether it is simply a feature of the transient dysphoric state. Forty-one undergraduates with a previous...

Representational theory of mind (RTM) development follows a universal developmental timetable whereby major advances in reasoning about mental representations occur between the ages of 3 and 5 years old. This progression appears to be only absent in the case of specific neurodevelopmental impairments, such as autism. Taken together, this suggests t...

Parents' use of conventional versus unconventional labels with their two- (n=12), three- (n=12) and four-year-old children (n=12) was assessed as they talked about objects that were either known or unknown to them. For known objects, parents provided typical conventional labels casually during the conversation. For unknown objects, parents were les...

Preschool children typically do not learn words from ignorant or unreliable speakers. Here, we examined the mechanism by which these learning failures occur by modifying the comprehension test procedure that measures word learning. Following lexical training by a knowledgeable or ignorant speaker, 48 preschool-aged children were asked either a stan...

Baseline electroencephalogram (EEG) data were collected from twenty-nine 4-year-old children who also completed batteries of representational theory-of-mind (RTM) tasks and executive functioning (EF) tasks. Neural sources of children's EEG alpha (6-9 Hz) were estimated and analyzed to determine whether individual differences in regional EEG alpha a...

In two studies, we investigated preschoolers’ ability to use others’ preferences to learn names for things. Two studies demonstrated that preschool children make smart use of others’ preferences. In the first study, preschool children only used information about others’ preferences when they were clearly linked to referential intentions. The second...

Young children show significant changes in their mental-state understanding as marked by their performance on false-belief tasks. This study provides evidence for activity in the prefrontal cortex associated with the development of this ability. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as adults (N = 24) and 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old childr...

We examined whether individual differences in children's performance on a scaled battery of theory-of-mind tasks was predicted by parents' performance on an adult theory-of-mind task. Forty-six 3-year-old children and their parents participated in this study when children were aged 2;11 to 4;0. Thirty dyads returned 6 months later for a second asse...

This chapter presents novel ideas about one set of possible constraining forces that guide inferences about others' intentions and goals. In particular, it proposes that action processing is guided in part by rationality assumptions akin to Grice's pragmatic principles. It begins by laying the conceptual groundwork for the proposal, which involves...

Theory of mind is claimed to develop universally among humans across cultures with vastly different folk psychologies. However, in the attempt to test and confirm a claim of universality, individual studies have been limited by small sample sizes, sample specificities, and an overwhelming focus on Anglo- European children. The current meta-analysis...

Although there are multiple ways in which young children can use language, categorize objects, use tools, and play games, they seem to quickly realize that there is one preferred, or conventional, way to do each of these things. These disparate domains share a common conventional structure.

Children's sensitivity to the shared, conventional nature of word meanings makes their word learning more efficient and less prone to error. After reviewing the evidence in support of this claim, we suggest that children's earliest appreciation of conventionality might be rooted in limitations in their theory-of-mind skills.

Mental state decoding is the aspect of theory-of-mind (ToM) reasoning that requires individuals to make judgments about others' mental states based solely on immediately available information. We investigated whether individual differences in resting, task-independent frontal EEG alpha asymmetries predicted performance on the "Mind in the Eyes" (MI...

Two studies were conducted to investigate the specificity of the relationship between preschoolers' emerging executive functioning skills and false belief understanding. Study 1 (N=44) showed that 3- to 5-year-olds' performance on an executive functioning task that required selective suppression of actions predicted performance on false belief task...

Preschoolers' theory-of-mind development follows a similar age trajectory across many cultures. To determine whether these similarities are related to similar underlying ontogenetic processes, we examined whether the relation between theory of mind and executive function commonly found among U.S. preschoolers is also present among Chinese preschool...

Findings and methodologies from cognitive development and cognitive neuroscience studies are integrated in this chapter in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the neurocognitive underpinnings and development of theory of mind in preschoolers. Two hypotheses on how the development of theory of mind is paced by that of frontal-lobe functioni...

Depression is associated with profound impairments in social functioning. Past research and theory suggests that these impairments may be related to a difficulty in the ability of depressed individuals to identify and decode others' social cues. However, the nature of this difficulty is equivocal. This investigation is the first to adopt a theory-o...

This chapter presents arguments and reviews evidence in support of the hypothesis that in the course of typical word learning, young children actively pursue joint attention because they understand that others' attentional focus gives information about their referential and communicative intentions. It argues that alternative conceptions of the rol...

Children sometimes seem to expect words to have mutually exclusive meanings in certain contexts of early word learning. In 2 studies, 12- to 24-month-old children and their parents were videotaped as they engaged in conversations while playing with sets of toys (sea creatures, vehicles, doll clothing) in free-play, storytelling, and categorization...

Autism is a lifelong developmental disorder that is associated with severe difficulties with "theory-of-mind"--the understanding that others' behaviors are motivated by internal mental states. Here, we raise the possibility that research examining the neural bases of theory-of-mind reasoning has the potential to inform researchers about the elusive...

Theory of mind, attributing behaviors to mental states, is a cognitive ability central to human social interactions. To investigate the neural substrates of theory of mind reasoning, we recorded human event-related brain potentials (ERP) while participants made judgments about belief and judgments about reality. A late ERP component (peaking around...

Successful negotiation of human social interactions rests on having a theory of mind - an understanding of how others' behaviors can be understood in terms of internal mental states, such as beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions. A core theory-of-mind skill is the ability to decode others' mental states on the basis of observable information,...

Two studies investigated how preschool children's interpretations of novel words as names for parts of objects were affected by 3 kinds of information: (a) whole object familiarity, (b) whole part juxtaposition, and (c) syntactic information indicating possession. Study 1 tested 3- to 4-year-olds and found that although there was evidence that all...

The studies in Weaving a Lexicon make a significant contribution to the growing field of lexical acquisition by considering the multidimensional way in which infants and children acquire the lexicon of their native language. They examine the many strands of knowledge and skill—including perceptual sensitivities, conceptual and semantic constraints,...

Thirty-six three- to four-year-old children were tested to assess whether hearing a word-referent link from an ignorant speaker affected children's abilities to subsequently link the same word with an alternative referent offered by another speaker. In the principal experimental conditions, children first heard either an ignorant or a knowledgeable...

When parents label novel parts of familiar objects, they typically provide familiar whole-object terms before offering novel part terms (e.g., "See this cup? This is the rim."). Such whole-part juxtaposition might help children to accurately interpret the meaning of novel part terms, but it can do so only if they recognize the conjunction as a pote...

Two studies addressed whether children consider speakers' knowledge states when establishing initial word-referent links. In Study 1, forty-eight 3- and 4-year-olds were taught two novel words by a speaker who expressed either knowledge or ignorance about the words' referents. Children showed better word learning when the speaker was knowledgeable....

Review essay on: B. M AC W HINNEY (ed.), The emergence of language . Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1999. An old joke that has been circulating for the past decade or so goes as follows: a biologist, a physicist, and a cognitive scientist were sitting around discussing the great achievements of their fields. The biologist waxed eloquent about the insights of...

The commentaries provide a thoughtful range of responses that reflect the existing theoretical diversity concerning explanations of language development. Below we clarify and amplify a few points from our original review that appeared to have been unclear.

Everyday understanding of human behavior rests on having a theory of mind--the ability to relate people's actions to underlying mental states such as beliefs and desires. It has been suggested that an impaired theory of mind may lie at the heart of psychological disorders that are characterized by deficits in social understanding, such as autism. I...

In this review article, it is argued that the wide range of communicative deficits that have been noted in both individuals with damage to the right cerebral hemisphere (RHD) and high-functioning individuals with autism may stem from difficulties appreciating the importance of their interlocutor's communicative intentions (CIs). It is also argued t...

Social-pragmatic approaches to the study of language, which emphasize a view of talk as interaction, have been influential over the past several decades. Turnbull and Carpendale present one such approach, in which they affirm three fundamental assumptions: (1) that talk consists of much more than ‘spoken language’: the who, where, when, and how of...

We applaud Dienes & Perner's efforts while raising some concerns regarding their assimilation of diverse data into a unifying framework. Some of the findings need not fit the framework they suggest. It is also not always clear what, above logico-semantic consistency, assimilation adds to the data that do fit their framework. These concerns are...

Using a cross-sectional natural language database, the authors investigated the parent-child conversations of 36 three-, 4-, and 5-year-olds to explore 2 issues regarding the development of metarepresentation. First, children's uses of explicit contrastives (ECs)--utterances that explicitly contrast 2 differing mental states--were explored. Four-ye...

Using a cross-sectional natural language database, the authors investigated the parent–child conversations of 36 three-, 4-, and 5-year-olds to explore 2 issues regarding the development of metarepresentation. First, children's uses of explicit contrastives (ECs)—utterances that explicitly contrast 2 differing mental states—were explored. Four-year...