Neural correlates of preschoolers’ passive-viewing false belief: Insights into continuity and change and the function of right temporoparietal activity in theory of mind development

Behavioral research demonstrates a critical transition in preschooler's mental-state understanding (i.e., theory of mind; ToM), revealed most starkly in performance on tasks about a character's false belief (e.g., about an object's location). Questions remain regarding the neural and cognitive processes differentiating children who pass versus fail behavioral false-belief tasks and the extent to which there is continuity versus change in the ToM neural network. To address these questions, we analyzed event-related spectral power in the electroencephalogram (EEG) to investigate how preschoolers’ neural activity during passive viewing of false-belief scenarios related to their explicit behavioral ToM performance. We found that neural activity during passive viewing of false-belief events (6–9 Hz EEG ‘alpha’ suppression in right temporoparietal [RTP] electrodes) strongly related to children's explicit ToM. However, children's RTP alpha suppression differed depending on their explicit behavioral ToM performance: Children who did better on a broad battery of standard ToM tasks and who passed explicit behavioral false-belief tasks showed greater RTP alpha suppression when the character's belief first became false (during the ‘location-change’ event); whereas children who did worse on the ToM battery and who failed explicit behavioral false-belief tasks showed greater RTP alpha suppression only later when they could evaluate the character's behavior in the context of prior events (during the ‘active-search’ event). Findings shed light on what differentiates preschoolers who pass versus fail explicit false-belief tasks and raise questions about how to interpret existing neuroscience data from ToM tasks across infancy to adulthood.

Research Highlights

• Preschool children's neural activity (EEG 6–9 Hz suppression in right temporoparietal [RTP] electrodes) during passive-viewing of false-belief events was related to their explicit behavioral theory-of-mind performance.
• Children who did better on a theory-of-mind (ToM) battery and passed explicit false-belief tasks showed greater RTP alpha suppression when the character's belief first became false.
• Children who performed worse on the ToM battery and failed explicit false-belief tasks showed greater RTP alpha suppression later when observing the character's search behavior.
• Findings reveal change in preschoolers’ ToM neural correlates and suggest that the presence of RTP activity does not necessarily indicate ‘mature’ theory of mind.