Overimitation and Theory of Mind

[jaolmos]

Regarding the causes behind why children exhibit overimitation vis-a-vis adults and chimps you posit that perhaps a not-consciously available thought process may be helping determine the course of action a child will eventually follow to obtain the reward.

Could your research be proof (partial or complete) of the lack of development of theory of mind in early childhood (aka intentional stance, social cognition, folkpsychology)?? The concept that the child may be regarding the adult as an omniscient agent could conceivably cause the overimitation.

Do you regard this as possible? I would love to hear your opinion about it. I came across this kind of early-childhood condition by means of a NYTimes article that argued that we may have an ingrained propensity to view omniscience as realistically plausible. It argues that because of this we transpose that which eventually we find no answers to another being (God) paradoxically in an attempt to maintain our view of rationality in the world (assuming that is our reason for why we exhibit an incomplete theory of mind). In this perspective the inexplicable becomes explicable by means of an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent "force". Something we don't understand we can explain away as being a result of His doing. Otherwise, we just can't explain it (and if our propensity for thinking in this manner is real, it may explain why we chose to believe in this omniscience over just accepting that as of yet we don?t have all the answers and the inexplicable is just a function of where we currently stand regarding our collective accumulated knowledge as a species).