When we hear the words mind reading we portray the ideas of psychics who are believed to have the ability to read another individuals mind by the use of an extra sense called telepathy. Telepathy is used within the performing art of mentalism in which an individual known as the mentalist demonstrates their power of the ability to read other people’s minds by performing acts of mind control, clairvoyance, hypnosis and telepathy and numerous other acts.
A lot of people have great faith in mentalists and they can find comfort and guidance from the information they receive from them. People pay money to receive such information by using services from clairvoyants palm readers and psychic’s. You can find such services in places such as newspapers, online search engines and local businesses. Many believe such people hold these ‘powers’ and that all they say is correct.
From a psychologists point of view upon this topic, they believe that there is more to this then having special ‘powers’ and that there is a psychological reason behind it all, which led them to look further into the subject and conduct necessary studies to find the answers they were looking for.
Psychologists were interested to find out the answer as to what is the cause of having the ability to ‘mind read’. Psychologists believed that mindreading abilities follow a developmental trajectory, Developmental trajectories are defined as long term path of change within someone’s life for example career, parenthood and education. Psychologists claim that the ability to mind read develops overtime and throughout aging. Psychologists interested in this topic are referred to as developmental psychologists (cited in Claire Hewson, pg 28, living psychology).
Such developmental psychologists use the term Theory of mind, which is often abbreviated as TOM. This term being subject of many studies over time. Theory of mind refers to the ability of humans and also suggested that some non-humans for example apes…
