The getting of wisdom: theory of mind in old age

Theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states, has been little explored beyond the early school years. Yet, later development, including possible patterns of breakdown, has important implications for current debate concerning the modularity/domain-specificity of the cognitive and neurological systems underlying theory of mind. This article reports a first study of theory of mind in normal aging. The results suggest that although performance on tasks with nonmental content may decrease with age, performance on theory of mind tasks remains intact and may even improve over the later adult years. The implications of these findings for the cognitive processes underlying theory of mind are discussed.