Buffy9139 wrote:
?Lucy found the cookie jar and opened it but mum had put spaghetti in it. Lucy was sad. Lucy put the jar away and went to play with her toys. Jamie saw the jar and went to open it. What does Jamie expect to see in the cookie jar?? The answer is cookies
I have some degree of difficulty with questions like this, I will explain why.
The question describes 3 human beings and their actions. In order to solve this question you need to change "Jamie", "Lucy" and "Mum" from cold hard words on the page, into imagined human beings with actions, beliefs and intentions. This process should be automatic, if you have a good theory of mind in place.
My brain automatically interprets Jamie etc. as being human beings, it has no problems with that.
It also automatically imagines concrete actions, like Jamie opening the jar. I can just see in my head, a small boy opening a jar. I understand that fine. I have transformed the words on the page into cognitive understanding
But no natural associations or concepts pop into my head for "Jamie expects..." or "Lucy was sad". In my imaginative mind, these are blanks. They remain as words, they are never transformed into mental concepts by my brain!
If you want to see how good a theory of mind you have, my suggestion is to just read through the question and be aware of what associations and concepts form in your brain in response to the wording. If you have a poor theory of mind, then it will feel to you like the question is hard to understand, and that your brain has not fully "processed" some of the ideas in the question.