A Verbal Behavior Analysis of Theory of Mind: Conceptual and Applied Implications

Theory of Mind (ToM) is typically used as an umbrella term to refer to and interpret a collection of responses that involve humans' ability to explain and predict others' behavior based on an understanding of their mental states, such as beliefs and desires. Not only is the ToM construct widely accepted in psychology, but it has also come to represent a broader theoretical system invoked to explain a range of social and cognitive processes in both typical and autistic development, with false-belief tasks serving as its litmus test. This article offers a behavioral account of ToM as verbal behavior-in particular, that it involves the speaker-listener first tacting the environmental variables that are exerting control over another person's behavior and then, engaging in conditional discriminations under multiple verbal control with respect to the difference between those variables and the ones influencing one's own behavior. The article is organized into four sections: (1) an overview of ToM within mainstream psychology; (2) the requirements for a behavioral account and summary of current approaches; (3) an alternative analysis rooted in verbal behavior; and (4) a potential instructional sequence for establishing ToM-related repertoires in children for whom they are currently absent or incomplete. Contrary to claims that ToM may exist in nonverbal or implicit form, the present analysis argues that it is necessarily verbal-requiring speaker-listener behavior shaped by social reinforcement. It attempts to redefine ToM in functional terms-as verbal behavior (Skinner, 1957) shaped through differential contact with the contingencies governing one's own and others' actions.