http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
theory, development, and neural foundations
1 online resource : color illustrations.
Intellectual development is primarily considered a domain specific enterprise. Children develop naïve physics, a folk psychology (theory of mind), a naïve biology, etc. But understanding perspective is a general, overarching phenomenon that cuts across such domains in development and in the brain. This has important theoretical consequences. For instance, our folk psychology cannot consist of a uniform 'theory of mind' for explaining behaviour. Parts of the theory that are sensitive to perspective differences have to be separated from those that are not. A central concern is how perspective is represented in the mind. The answer comes from mental files theory. This book introduces mental files theory in relation to object files and discourse referents and then applies it to the development of perspective taking in early childhood and to brain imaging.
"The prime focus is to extend mental files theory to the development of perspective taking in early childhood. The theory is predestined not only for work on perspective; it is the theoretical tool for describing a cognitive system that represents persisting objects, tracks them over time, and stores knowledge about them. Cognitive Psychology has badly neglected this fundamental aspect. I extend the application of mental files as object files in perception and as discourse referents in linguistics to verbal perspectives on visible objects. Philosophical work identifies a particular perspective with a mental file. Taking different perspectives on an object requires different, coreferential files of that object. Each file represents an object; coreferential files would make one think of more objects than there are. To avoid numerical confusion, coreferential files must be consolidated, an ability that develops between 3 to 5 years of age. Developmental progress on a large variety of tasks that require this ability fits this prescription. Tasks range from understanding false beliefs, false direction signs, photographic evidence, the appearance–reality distinction, visual perspective, interpretation of ambiguous figures, alternative naming, overcoming mutual exclusivity to processing identity statements. The sequence of understanding higher-order combinations of beliefs, knowledge, and conceptual perspectives follows from the mental files involved. Synchronous success in such different areas shows the theory's power of explaining developmental patterns that are not domain-specific"--
Introduction why perspective, why mental files? -- Mental files theory -- Deployment -- Tracking -- Identity -- Perspectives -- Beliefs, signs, images -- Appearances -- Language : mutual exclusivity and alternative naming -- Consolidation : identity de facto and switching names -- Higher-order perspectives -- Consolidating coreferential files in the brain -- Reflections.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]