Date of Award

1-2006

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

Psychology

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Julian Paul Keenan

Committee Member

Meredyth Appelbaum

Committee Member

Cigdem Talgar

Abstract

Previous research has indicated a relationship between mirror self-recognition and self-awareness (awareness of one's own mind). Theory of Mind (awareness of another's mind; ToM) may be related to both self-awareness and self recognition such that facilitation of self-awareness may be related to a facilitation of ToM. Buckle (1997) found that the relationship between self-recognition and self awareness could be manipulated acutely via a mirror. In her study, Buckle found that participants exposed to a mirror outperformed controls in an episodic memory task (a measure of self-awareness). In the current study, mirror exposure was manipulated to determine if self-exposure would facilitate performance on a ToM task. Participants performed an auditory veracity detection task following either exposure to a mirror or no exposure. It was found that participants in the mirror group outperformed those participants in the control group in terms of veracity detection in both accuracy and reaction time. Further, the mirror group also performed significantly better in terms of the Mind in the Eyes (MIE) task (Baron-Cohen, 2003), another ToM measure. These data indicate that ToM ability can be manipulated acutely via use of a mirror.

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