ABSTRACT
The authors provide an overview of the phenomenon of theory of mind and the more basic psycho-behavioral phenomena—attention control, agent detection, perspective taking, memory, and emotion detection—that underlie it. They further identify between two disparate forms of theory of mind: bottom-up and top-down theory of mind, which differ from one another in terms of the working entities and activities involved in coordinating attention control, agent detection, perspective taking, memory, and emotion detection to produce an understanding of the actions and mental states of others. Lastly, they identify the various ways in which theory of mind exists within social learning, social control, and general strain theories.
