Thought Bubbles

Borrow the cartoonist’s trick to make the invisible visible: a thought bubble drawn over someone’s head shows what they’re thinking — and, crucially, that a thought can be wrong. Children grasp the symbol almost instantly once it’s named, and it becomes a concrete handle for the hardest idea in theory of mind: that what’s in someone’s head can differ from what’s real.

  1. Teach the symbol in one sentence. Draw a head with an empty cloud above it. “This cloud shows what someone is THINKING.” Draw a banana inside: “He’s thinking about a banana.”
  2. Thought is not speech, and not reality. “He’s thinking banana — but he might not SAY it. And maybe there’s no banana here at all; it’s just in his head.”
  3. Make a thought come true… or not. Hold the cloud over a family member: “What’s in Daddy’s thought bubble right now?” Draw a guess, then ask him.
  4. Put a FALSE thought in the bubble — pair it with the trick box. Re-run the raisin-box-with-a-button. Before opening, draw raisins in Grandma’s bubble: “Grandma’s bubble has RAISINS — that’s what she thinks. But look — it’s really a button! Her thought is wrong, even though it’s a good guess.”
  5. Use it on the hidden-object story. Hold a bubble over the returning toy in “Where Will They Look?” showing the old hiding place: “Teddy’s bubble shows the basket — that’s where he thinks it is.”
  6. Turn it on real life. “What’s in your brother’s bubble while he waits for his turn?” Draw, then check by asking. Reinforce: we can’t really see thoughts, so we wonder and we ask.

Variation: Cloud-on-a-Stick — cut a paper cloud, tape it to a stick, hold it over anyone. Feelings Bubble — draw what someone feels inside (a bridge to hidden emotion). Two Bubbles — give two people different thoughts about the same thing.

Requirements

  • Space: A table for drawing; then anywhere for the cloud-on-a-stick
  • Surface: A flat surface to draw on
  • Materials: Paper and a marker; optional laminated cloud or small whiteboard, or a paper cloud taped to a stick
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; fun in a small group
  • Supervision: Adult-led; the child can wield the cloud independently once they get the idea

Rationale & Objective

Thought bubbles are an unusually efficient scaffold because the comprehension comes almost for free: Wellman, Hollander & Schult (1996) found that although few preschoolers spontaneously know what a cartoon thought-bubble means, once simply told it “shows what someone is thinking,” the great majority of 3- and 4-year-olds instantly understand that it depicts specific, internal, mental contents — and that those contents can be things that aren’t real. As a teaching tool the bubble has a strong track record: thought-bubble “picture-in-the-head” training has produced significant false-belief gains and generalisation in children with autism (Wellman et al., 2002; Paynter & Peterson, 2013) and in deaf children, and belief-focused training transfers more broadly (Slaughter & Gopnik, 1996; Hofmann et al.’s 2016 meta-analysis, g = 0.75). Its special power is that, laid over a hiding game or a trick box, it makes a false belief visible and concrete — you can literally point at the wrong thought next to the real object. Honest framing — the cleanest randomised evidence is in autistic and deaf samples plus a general training meta-analysis rather than isolated trials with typical 5-year-olds, so treat thought bubbles as a strongly-supported, mechanism-clear support — best used to amplify the other activities — rather than a standalone guaranteed trainer.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: treats the bubble as a picture of a real nearby object, or fills it with what’s actually true rather than what the character thinks
  • Developing: understands the bubble means “thoughts” when prompted; can fill it with a character’s true belief; struggles to put a false thought in it
  • Proficient: independently draws or states a character’s belief in the bubble, including when it mismatches reality (“his bubble says basket, but it’s really in the box”)
  • Advanced: uses bubbles unprompted to explain or predict behaviour (“her bubble said raisins, so she’ll be surprised”); gives two people different bubbles for the same situation; narrates their own bubble

Safety Notes

  • When drawing real people’s thoughts, model it kindly — “let’s wonder what Daddy’s thinking,” never mockery
  • Keep it a guessing-and-checking game — reinforce that we can’t actually see thoughts, so we ask
  • Don’t use the bubble to put words in the child’s mouth or to police “wrong” thoughts
  • For a child who struggles, the bubble is a support, not a test — back off to thoughts you can both happily agree on

Hints

  • Playfulness: keep a cloud-on-a-stick handy to pop over heads at dinner or during a story (“what’s in the wolf’s bubble?”)
  • Sustain interest: layer bubbles onto the hiding and trick-box games rather than doing them alone — that’s where they shine
  • Common mistake: drawing the bubble so realistically it reads as a real object; only ever depicting true thoughts (the false-thought case is the whole point)
  • Limited materials: no drawing needed — cup your hands above your head and say “in my thought bubble I’m imagining…”; or use a sticky note
  • Cross-domain: language (the richest mental-verb builder — think, believe, guess, wonder); emotion (feelings bubbles bridge to hidden emotion); literacy and comics (story comprehension); executive function (juggling reality versus the depicted belief)
  • Progression: name the symbol → fill in a true thought → fill in a false thought → use two different bubbles for two people → use bubbles to predict feelings and behaviour

Sources

  • Wellman, H. M., Hollander, M. & Schult, C. A. (1996). “Young children’s understanding of thought bubbles and of thoughts.” Child Development, 67(3), 768–788
  • Wellman, H. M., Baron-Cohen, S., Caswell, R., Gómez, J. C., Swettenham, J., Toye, E. & Lagattuta, K. (2002). “Thought-bubbles help children with autism acquire an alternative to a theory of mind.” Autism, 6(4), 343–363
  • Paynter, J. & Peterson, C. C. (2013). “Further evidence of benefits of thought-bubble training for theory of mind development in children with autism spectrum disorders.” Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 7(2), 344–348
  • Slaughter, V. & Gopnik, A. (1996). “Conceptual coherence in the child’s theory of mind: Training children to understand belief.” Child Development, 67(6), 2967–2988
  • Hofmann, S. G., Doan, S. N., Sprung, M., Wilson, A., Ebesutani, C., Andrews, L. A., Curtiss, J. & Harris, P. L. (2016). “Training children’s theory-of-mind: A meta-analysis of controlled studies.” Cognition, 150, 200–212
  • CASEL — Self-Awareness (identifying one’s own thoughts) and Social Awareness
  • UK EYFS — PSED Self-Regulation ELG (understanding of their own feelings and those of others)
  • Head Start ELOF — Social & Emotional (recognizes states in self and others); Approaches to Learning (symbolic, flexible thinking)