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Gönül G, Clément F. How young children use manifest emotions and dominance cues to understand social rules: a registered report. Cogn Emot 2024:1-20. [PMID: 39069642 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2384140] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2021] [Revised: 07/18/2024] [Accepted: 07/19/2024] [Indexed: 07/30/2024]
Abstract
Given the complexity of human social life, it is astonishing to observe how quickly children adapt to their social environment. To be accepted by the other members, it is crucial to understand and follow the rules and norms shared by the group. How and from whom do young children learn these social rules? In the experiments, based on the crucial role of affective social learning and dominance hierarchies in simple rule understanding, we showed 15-to-23-month-olds and 3-to-5-year-old children videos where the agents' body size and affective cues were manipulated. In the dominant rule-maker condition, when a smaller protagonist puts an object in one location, a bigger agent reacts with a positive reaction; on the contrary, when the smaller protagonist puts an object in another location, the bigger agent displays a negative reaction. In the subordinate rule-maker condition, the roles are shifted but the agents differ. Toddlers expect the protagonist to follow the rules (based on anticipatory looks), independent of the dominant status of the rule-making agent. Three-to-five-year-old pre-schoolers overall perform at the chance level but expect the protagonist to disobey a rule in the first trial, and obey the rule in the second trial if the rule-maker is dominant.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gökhan Gönül
- Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
| | - Fabrice Clément
- Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
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2
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Wu R, Leow K, Yu N, Rafter C, Rosenbaum K, F de C Hamilton A, White SJ. Evaluative contexts facilitate implicit mentalizing: relation to the broader autism phenotype and mental health. Sci Rep 2024; 14:4697. [PMID: 38409351 PMCID: PMC10897468 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55075-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/23/2023] [Accepted: 02/19/2024] [Indexed: 02/28/2024] Open
Abstract
One promising account for autism is implicit mentalizing difficulties. However, this account and even the existence of implicit mentalizing have been challenged because the replication results are mixed. Those unsuccessful replications may be due to the task contexts not being sufficiently evaluative. Therefore, the current study developed a more evaluative paradigm by implementing a prompt question. This was assessed in 60 non-autistic adults and compared with a non-prompt version. Additionally, parents of autistic children are thought to show a genetic liability to autistic traits and cognition and often report mental health problems, but the broader autism phenotype (BAP) is an under-researched area. Thus, we also aimed to compare 33 BAP and 26 non-BAP mothers on mentalizing abilities, autistic traits, compensation and mental health. Our results revealed that more evaluative contexts can facilitate implicit mentalizing in BAP and non-BAP populations, and thus improve task reliability and replicability. Surprisingly, BAP mothers showed better implicit mentalizing but worse mental health than non-BAP mothers, which indicates the heterogeneity in the broader autism phenotype and the need to promote BAP mothers' psychological resilience. The findings underscore the importance of contexts for implicit mentalizing and the need to profile mentalizing and mental health in BAP parents.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ruihan Wu
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AZ, UK.
| | - Karen Leow
- National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Nicole Yu
- National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Ciara Rafter
- Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, Manchester, UK
| | - Katia Rosenbaum
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AZ, UK
| | - Antonia F de C Hamilton
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AZ, UK
| | - Sarah J White
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AZ, UK.
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3
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Köster M, Hepach R. Preverbal infants' understanding of social norms. Sci Rep 2024; 14:2983. [PMID: 38316858 PMCID: PMC10844370 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-53110-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/19/2023] [Accepted: 01/27/2024] [Indexed: 02/07/2024] Open
Abstract
Social norms are foundational to human cooperation and co-existence in social groups. A crucial marker of social norms is that a behavior is not only shared, but that the conformity to the behavior of others is a basis for social evaluation (i.e., reinforcement and sanctioning), taking the is, how individuals usually behave, to an ought, how individuals should behave to be socially approved by others. In this preregistered study, we show that 11-month-old infants grasp this fundamental aspect about social norms already in their first year. They showed a pupillary surprise response for unexpected social responses, namely the disapproval and exclusion of an individual who showed the same behavior like others or the approval and inclusion of an individual who behaved differently. That preverbal infants link the conformity with others' behavior to social evaluations, before they respond to norm violations themselves, indicates that the foundations of social norm understanding lie in early infancy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Moritz Köster
- Institute of Psychology, University of Regensburg, Sedanstraße 1, 93055, Regensburg, Germany.
| | - Robert Hepach
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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4
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Li W, Germine LT, Mehr SA, Srinivasan M, Hartshorne J. Developmental psychologists should adopt citizen science to improve generalization and reproducibility. INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 2024; 33:e2348. [PMID: 38515737 PMCID: PMC10957098 DOI: 10.1002/icd.2348] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/06/2021] [Accepted: 05/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Widespread failures of replication and generalization are, ironically, a scientific triumph, in that they confirm the fundamental metascientific theory that underlies our field. Generalizable and replicable findings require testing large numbers of subjects from a wide range of demographics with a large, randomly-sampled stimulus set, and using a variety of experimental parameters. Because few studies accomplish any of this, meta-scientists predict that findings will frequently fail to replicate or generalize. We argue that to be more robust and replicable, developmental psychology needs to find a mechanism for collecting data at greater scale and from more diverse populations. Luckily, this mechanism already exists: Citizen science, in which large numbers of uncompensated volunteers provide data. While best-known for its contributions to astronomy and ecology, citizen science has also produced major findings in neuroscience and psychology, and increasingly in developmental psychology. We provide examples, address practical challenges, discuss limitations, and compare to other methods of obtaining large datasets. Ultimately, we argue that the range of studies where it makes sense *not* to use citizen science is steadily dwindling.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wei Li
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA
| | - Laura Thi Germine
- McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA
| | - Samuel A. Mehr
- Data Science Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
- School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
| | | | - Joshua Hartshorne
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA
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5
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Taylor D, Gönül G, Alexander C, Züberbühler K, Clément F, Glock HJ. Reading minds or reading scripts? De-intellectualising theory of mind. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2023; 98:2028-2048. [PMID: 37408142 DOI: 10.1111/brv.12994] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2022] [Revised: 06/14/2023] [Accepted: 06/19/2023] [Indexed: 07/07/2023]
Abstract
Understanding the origins of human social cognition is a central challenge in contemporary science. In recent decades, the idea of a 'Theory of Mind' (ToM) has emerged as the most popular way of explaining unique features of human social cognition. This default view has been progressively undermined by research on 'implicit' ToM, which suggests that relevant precursor abilities may already be present in preverbal human infants and great apes. However, this area of research suffers from conceptual difficulties and empirical limitations, including explanatory circularity, over-intellectualisation, and inconsistent empirical replication. Our article breaks new ground by adapting 'script theory' for application to both linguistic and non-linguistic agents. It thereby provides a new theoretical framework able to resolve the aforementioned issues, generate novel predictions, and provide a plausible account of how individuals make sense of the behaviour of others. Script theory is based on the premise that pre-verbal infants and great apes are capable of basic forms of agency-detection and non-mentalistic goal understanding, allowing individuals to form event-schemata that are then used to make sense of the behaviour of others. We show how script theory circumvents fundamental problems created by ToM-based frameworks, explains patterns of inconsistent replication, and offers important novel predictions regarding how humans and other animals understand and predict the behaviour of others.
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Affiliation(s)
- Derry Taylor
- Faculty of Science, Institute of Biology, Department of Comparative Cognition, University of Neuchâtel, Rue-Emile-Argand 11, Neuchâtel, 2000, Switzerland
| | - Gökhan Gönül
- Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Institute of Language and Communication Sciences, Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, Pierre-à-Mazel 7, Neuchâtel, 2000, Switzerland
| | - Cameron Alexander
- Department of Philosophy, University of Zürich, Zürichbergstrasse 43, Zurich, CH-8044, Switzerland
| | - Klaus Züberbühler
- Faculty of Science, Institute of Biology, Department of Comparative Cognition, University of Neuchâtel, Rue-Emile-Argand 11, Neuchâtel, 2000, Switzerland
| | - Fabrice Clément
- Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Institute of Language and Communication Sciences, Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, Pierre-à-Mazel 7, Neuchâtel, 2000, Switzerland
| | - Hans-Johann Glock
- Department of Philosophy, University of Zürich, Zürichbergstrasse 43, Zurich, CH-8044, Switzerland
- Institute for the Study of Language Evolution, University of Zürich, Affolternstrasse 56, Zürich, CH-8050, Switzerland
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Rothmaler K, Grosse Wiesmann C. Evidence against implicit belief processing in a blindfold task. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0294136. [PMID: 37956182 PMCID: PMC10642834 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0294136] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/03/2023] [Accepted: 10/25/2023] [Indexed: 11/15/2023] Open
Abstract
Understanding what other people think is crucial to our everyday interactions. We seem to be affected by the perspective of others even in situations where it is irrelevant to us. This intrusion from others' perspectives has been referred to as altercentric bias and has been suggested to reflect implicit belief processing. There is an ongoing debate about how robust such altercentric effects are and whether they indeed reflect true mentalizing or result from simpler, domain-general processes. As a critical test for true mentalizing, the blindfold manipulation has been proposed. That is, participants are familiarized with a blindfold that is either transparent or opaque. When they then observe a person wearing this blindfold, they can only infer what this person can or cannot see based on their knowledge of the blindfold's transparency. Here, we used this blindfold manipulation to test whether participants' reaction times in detecting an object depended on the agent's belief about the object's location, itself manipulated with a blindfold. As a second task, we asked participants to detect where the agent was going to look for the object. Across two experiments with a large participant pool (N = 234) and different settings (online/lab), we found evidence against altercentric biases in participants' response times in detecting the object. We did, however, replicate a well-documented reality congruency effect. When asked to detect the agent's action, in turn, participants were biased by their own knowledge of where the object should be, in line with egocentric biases previously found in false belief reasoning. These findings suggests that altercentric biases do not reflect belief processing but lower-level processes, or alternatively, that implicit belief processing does not occur when the belief needs to be inferred from one's own experience.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katrin Rothmaler
- Minerva Fast Track Research Group Milestones of Early Cognitive Development, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany
- Humboldt Research Group, Faculty of Education, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany
| | - Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann
- Minerva Fast Track Research Group Milestones of Early Cognitive Development, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany
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Pouscoulous N. More than one path to pragmatics? Insights from children's grasp of implicit, figurative and ironical meaning. Cognition 2023; 240:105531. [PMID: 37611331 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105531] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/10/2022] [Revised: 06/09/2023] [Accepted: 06/20/2023] [Indexed: 08/25/2023]
Abstract
Human communication requires impressive inferential abilities and mind-reading skills. To learn how to speak and become competent communicators children need both. The development of pragmatic abilities presents us with a puzzle. On the one hand, much evidence suggests pragmatics play a grounding role in early communication and language acquisition. On the other, preschoolers find linguistic pragmatic inferences such as implicatures, metaphor and irony difficult to grasp. Apperly and Butterfill (2009) maintain that there are two separate systems for belief reasoning: a simpler one and a more sophisticated one that develops later. Along this line of reasoning we might also expect there to be two separate kinds of pragmatic abilities: an early set using (among other things) the simpler Theory of Mind system, and a more sophisticated one appearing later in childhood and using full-blown Theory of Mind. I will argue there is no need to divide pragmatic abilities in such a way to bridge the gap between the pragmatic inferential skills found in toddlers and the difficulties observed in preschoolers. Evidence from the past two decades indicates that phenomena such as implicatures and metaphor (but not irony) can be understood earlier than previously established. Additionally, children's apparent struggle with specific pragmatic inferences might be better explained by factors independent from pragmatic competence, but which interact with it.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nausicaa Pouscoulous
- University College London, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, United Kingdom.
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8
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Hou W, Li X, Yang Y, Li J. Joint intention understanding in children with autism spectrum disorder. Autism Res 2023; 16:1707-1718. [PMID: 37283253 DOI: 10.1002/aur.2964] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2022] [Accepted: 05/26/2023] [Indexed: 06/08/2023]
Abstract
This study examined the ability of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to generate joint intention-based action prediction in a joint action task. Children were presented with a series of videos in which two actors either played with blocks based on joint intention (social condition) or played with blocks independently (nonsocial condition). In the familiarization stage, two actors demonstrated how they played with blocks three times. In the test stage, one actor left the scene, and another actor grasped a block and asked where she should place it. Children's gaze behavior was assessed by an eye tracker. After watching videos, children were asked to answer two questions: an action prediction question and an intention understanding question. The results showed that in the implicit eye movement task, children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children exhibited location-based anticipatory gaze under both conditions. However, in terms of explicit behavioral responses, TD children showed higher accuracy in response to action prediction questions and intention understanding questions than children with ASD in the social condition, while no significant group difference was found in the nonsocial condition. These results indicate that children with ASD have difficulty understanding joint intention and that their action prediction is primarily driven by bottom-up sensory inputs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wenwen Hou
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Child Language Lab, School of Foreign Languages, Central South University, Changsha, China
| | - Xue Li
- Peking University Sixth Hospital, Peking University Institute of Mental Health, NHC Key Laboratory of Mental Health, National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders, Peking University, Peking University Sixth Hospital, Beijing, China
| | - Yunmei Yang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Jing Li
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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Király I, Oláh K, Kovács ÁM. Can 18-Month-Olds Revise Attributed Beliefs? Open Mind (Camb) 2023; 7:435-444. [PMID: 37637294 PMCID: PMC10449395 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00087] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2023] [Accepted: 05/29/2023] [Indexed: 08/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Successful social interactions rely on flexibly tracking and revising others' beliefs. These can be revised prospectively, new events leading to new beliefs, or retrospectively, when realizing that an attribution may have been incorrect. However, whether infants are capable of such belief revisions is an open question. We tested whether 18-month-olds can revise an attributed FB into a TB when they learn that a person may have witnessed an event that they initially thought she could not see. Infants first observed Experimenter 1 (E1) hiding two objects into two boxes. Then E1 left the room, and the locations of the objects were swapped. Infants then accompanied Experimenter 2 (E2) to the adjacent room. In the FB-revised-to-TB condition, infants observed E1 peeking into the experimental room through a one-way mirror, whereas in the FB-stays-FB condition, they observed E1 reading a book. After returning to the experimental room E1 requested an object by pointing to one of the boxes. In the FB-stays-FB condition, most infants chose the non-referred box, congruently with the agent's FB. However, in the FB-revised-to-TB condition, most infants chose the other, referred box. Thus, 18-month-olds revised an already attributed FB after receiving evidence that this attribution might have been wrong.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ildikó Király
- MTA-ELTE Social Minds Research Group, Psychology Institute, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
| | - Katalin Oláh
- MTA-ELTE Social Minds Research Group, Psychology Institute, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
| | - Ágnes M. Kovács
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
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Haskaraca FN, Proft M, Liszkowski U, Rakoczy H. How robust are egocentric and altercentric interference effects in social cognition? a test with explicit and implicit versions of a continuous false belief task. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1142302. [PMID: 37492453 PMCID: PMC10363613 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1142302] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/11/2023] [Accepted: 06/23/2023] [Indexed: 07/27/2023] Open
Abstract
It has been long assumed that meta-representational theory of mind (ToM) -our ability to ascribe mental states to ourselves and other people- emerges around age four as indicated in performance on explicit verbal false belief tasks. In contrast, newer studies assessing false belief understanding with implicit, non-verbal measures suggest that some form of ToM may be present even in infancy. But these studies now face replication issues, and it remains unclear whether they can provide robust evidence for implicit ToM. One line of research on implicit ToM, however, may remain promising: Studies that tap so-called altercentric biases. Such biases occur when agents in their judgments about the world are influenced (perform slower, more error-prone) in light of another agent's deviating perspective even if that perspective is completely irrelevant to the task; they thus can be seen as indicators of spontaneous and implicit ToM. Altercentric biases are the mirror images of egocentric biases (agents are influenced by their own perspective when evaluating another agent's deviating perspective). In three studies with adults, we aimed to tap both egocentric and altercentric interference effects within the same task format. We used the so-called Sandbox task, a false belief task with continuous locations. In Study 1, we tested an online adaptation of the Sandbox task, which we also used to explore potential cross-cultural differences in these biases. Studies 2 and 3 combined the Sandbox task with mouse-tracking measures. These studies revealed neither egocentric nor altercentric biases. These null results are discussed with regard to the question whether absence of evidence here may present evidence of absence of such spontaneous perspective-taking biases or merely false negatives.
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Affiliation(s)
- Feride Nur Haskaraca
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Marina Proft
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Ulf Liszkowski
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
| | - Hannes Rakoczy
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
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Brandt S, Hargreaves S, Theakston A. Putting Complement Clauses into Context: Testing the Effects of Story Context, False-Belief Understanding, and Syntactic form on Children's and Adults' Comprehension and Production of Complement Clauses. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13311. [PMID: 37417456 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13311] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2021] [Revised: 06/08/2023] [Accepted: 06/16/2023] [Indexed: 07/08/2023]
Abstract
A key factor that affects whether and at what age children can demonstrate an understanding of false belief and complement-clause constructions is the type of task used (whether it is implicit/indirect or explicit/direct). In the current study, we investigate, in an implicit/indirect way, whether children understand that a story character's belief can be true or false, and whether this understanding affects children's choice of linguistic structure to describe the character's belief or to explain the character's belief-based action. We also measured children's understanding of false belief in explicit false-belief tasks. English- and German-speaking young 4- and 5-year-olds as well as English- and German-speaking adult controls heard complement-clause constructions in a story context where the belief mentioned in the complement clause (e.g., "He thinks that she's not feeling well") turned out to be false, true, or was left open. After hearing the test question ("Why does he not play with her?"), all age groups were most likely to repeat the whole complement-clause construction when the belief turned out to be false. That is, they tended to explicitly refer to the character's perspective and say "He thinks…" When the belief turned out to be true, participants often reverted to a simple clause ("She's not feeling well"). Furthermore, children with better short-term memory were more likely to repeat the whole complement-clause construction. However, children's performance in explicit false-belief tasks showed no relation to their performance in our novel, more implicit/indirect, task. Whether or not the complement clause was introduced by a that complementizer only had a small effect on the German adults' responses, where leaving out the complementizer also changes the word order of the complement clause. Overall, our results suggest that task characteristics and individual differences in short-term memory affect children's ability to demonstrate false-belief understanding and to express this understanding linguistically.
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Affiliation(s)
- Silke Brandt
- Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University
| | - Stephanie Hargreaves
- Division of Psychology, Communication and Human Neuroscience, University of Manchester
| | - Anna Theakston
- Division of Psychology, Communication and Human Neuroscience, University of Manchester
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Heller D, Brown-Schmidt S. The Multiple Perspectives Theory of Mental States in Communication. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13322. [PMID: 37483115 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13322] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/23/2021] [Revised: 06/11/2023] [Accepted: 07/02/2023] [Indexed: 07/25/2023]
Abstract
Inspired by early proposals in philosophy, dominant accounts of language posit a central role for mutual knowledge, either encoded directly in common ground, or approximated through other cognitive mechanisms. Using existing empirical evidence from language and memory, we challenge this tradition, arguing that mutual knowledge captures only a subset of the mental states needed to support communication. In a novel theoretical proposal, we argue for a cognitive architecture that includes separate, distinct representations of the self and other, and a cognitive process that compares these representations continuously during conversation, outputting both similarities and differences in perspective. Our theory accounts for existing data, interfaces with findings from other cognitive domains, and makes novel predictions about the role of perspective in language use. We term this new account the Multiple Perspectives Theory of mental states in communication.
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Is false belief understanding stable from infancy to childhood? We don’t know yet. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2023. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2023.101309] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/05/2023]
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14
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Ni Q, Shoyer J, Bautista Z, Raport A, Moll H. Toddlers' expressions indicate that they track agent-object interactions but do not detect false object representations. J Exp Child Psychol 2023; 231:105639. [PMID: 36863171 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105639] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/07/2022] [Revised: 01/10/2023] [Accepted: 01/22/2023] [Indexed: 03/04/2023]
Abstract
In the theory of mind debate, a middle position between nativism and conceptual change theory has gained traction. This position states that children younger than 4 years track agent-object relations (by building "records" of others' experiences) without cognizing how agents represent-or misrepresent-the objects they encounter. We tested these claims with 3.5-year-olds using puppet shows geared to evoke suspenseful expressions. In two experiments (N = 90), children watched an agent approach an object that looked like her favorite food but was inedible. In Experiment 1, children showed tense expressions when an agent's real food item was, unbeknownst to her, replaced with a fake food item. Children, however, showed no signs of understanding that the agent would mistake the deceptive object for food. Consistent with this, children's expressions in Experiment 2 did not differ when the agent approached a deceptive object compared with when she approached a non-deceptive object. The experiments support the middle position's view that toddlers track agent-object interactions but fail to recognize when agents misrepresent objects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qianhui Ni
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
| | - Jake Shoyer
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
| | - Zoë Bautista
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
| | - Alexandra Raport
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
| | - Henrike Moll
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
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15
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Colantonio J, Bascandziev I, Theobald M, Brod G, Bonawitz E. Seeing the Error in My " Bayes": A Quantified Degree of Belief Change Correlates with Children's Pupillary Surprise Responses Following Explicit Predictions. ENTROPY (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2023; 25:211. [PMID: 36832578 PMCID: PMC9955423 DOI: 10.3390/e25020211] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/05/2022] [Revised: 01/13/2023] [Accepted: 01/19/2023] [Indexed: 06/18/2023]
Abstract
Bayesian models allow us to investigate children's belief revision alongside physiological states, such as "surprise". Recent work finds that pupil dilation (or the "pupillary surprise response") following expectancy violations is predictive of belief revision. How can probabilistic models inform the interpretations of "surprise"? Shannon Information considers the likelihood of an observed event, given prior beliefs, and suggests stronger surprise occurs following unlikely events. In contrast, Kullback-Leibler divergence considers the dissimilarity between prior beliefs and updated beliefs following observations-with greater surprise indicating more change between belief states to accommodate information. To assess these accounts under different learning contexts, we use Bayesian models that compare these computational measures of "surprise" to contexts where children are asked to either predict or evaluate the same evidence during a water displacement task. We find correlations between the computed Kullback-Leibler divergence and the children's pupillometric responses only when the children actively make predictions, and no correlation between Shannon Information and pupillometry. This suggests that when children attend to their beliefs and make predictions, pupillary responses may signal the degree of divergence between a child's current beliefs and the updated, more accommodating beliefs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joseph Colantonio
- Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
- Psychology Department, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ 07102, USA
| | - Igor Bascandziev
- Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
| | - Maria Theobald
- DIPF|Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Rostocker Str. 6, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Garvin Brod
- DIPF|Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Rostocker Str. 6, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Elizabeth Bonawitz
- Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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Poulin-Dubois D, Goldman EJ, Meltzer A, Psaradellis E. Discontinuity from implicit to explicit theory of mind from infancy to preschool age. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2023. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101273] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
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17
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Wilson VAD, Bethell EJ, Nawroth C. The use of gaze to study cognition: limitations, solutions, and applications to animal welfare. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1147278. [PMID: 37205074 PMCID: PMC10185774 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1147278] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/18/2023] [Accepted: 04/17/2023] [Indexed: 05/21/2023] Open
Abstract
The study of gaze responses, typically using looking time paradigms, has become a popular approach to improving our understanding of cognitive processes in non-verbal individuals. Our interpretation of data derived from these paradigms, however, is constrained by how we conceptually and methodologically approach these problems. In this perspective paper, we outline the application of gaze studies in comparative cognitive and behavioral research and highlight current limitations in the interpretation of commonly used paradigms. Further, we propose potential solutions, including improvements to current experimental approaches, as well as broad-scale benefits of technology and collaboration. Finally, we outline the potential benefits of studying gaze responses from an animal welfare perspective. We advocate the implementation of these proposals across the field of animal behavior and cognition to aid experimental validity, and further advance our knowledge on a variety of cognitive processes and welfare outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vanessa A. D. Wilson
- Department of Comparative Cognition, Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- *Correspondence: Vanessa A. D. Wilson,
| | - Emily J. Bethell
- Research Centre in Evolutionary Anthropology and Palaeoecology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom
| | - Christian Nawroth
- Institute of Behavioural Physiology, Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN), Dummerstorf, Germany
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18
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Four-year-olds adapt their deception to the epistemic states of others. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101243] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
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19
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Barone P, Wenzel L, Proft M, Rakoczy H. Do young children track other's beliefs, or merely their perceptual access? An interactive, anticipatory measure of early theory of mind. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2022; 9:211278. [PMID: 36226128 PMCID: PMC9533367 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.211278] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/24/2021] [Accepted: 09/13/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
This paper aimed to contribute to answering three questions. First, how robust and reliable are early implicit measures of false belief (FB) understanding? Second, do these measures tap FB understanding rather than simpler processes such as tracking the protagonist's perceptual access? Third, do implicit FB tasks tap an earlier, more basic form of theory of mind (ToM) than standard verbal tasks? We conducted a conceptual replication of Garnham & Perner's task (Garnham and Perner 2001 Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 19, 413-432) simultaneously measuring children's anticipatory looking and interactive behaviours toward an agent with a true or FB (N = 81, M = 40 months). Additionally, we implemented an ignorance condition and a standard FB task. We successfully replicated the original findings: children's looking and interactive behaviour differed according to the agent's true or FB. However, children mostly did not differentiate between FB and ignorance conditions in various measures of anticipation and uncertainty, suggesting the use of simpler conceptual strategies than full-blown ToM. Moreover, implicit measures were all related to each other but largely not related to performance in the standard FB task, except for first look in the FB condition. Overall, our findings suggest that these implicit measures are robust but may not tap the same underlying cognitive capacity as explicit FB tasks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pamela Barone
- Department of Psychology, Universidad Católica de Murcia (UCAM), Campus de los Jerónimos, 30107 Murcia, Spain
- Human Evolution and Cognition Group (EvoCog), University of the Balearic Islands, Carretera de Valldemossa km 7.5, 07122 Palma, Illes Balears, Spain
| | - Lisa Wenzel
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
| | - Marina Proft
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
| | - Hannes Rakoczy
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
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20
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Schulze C, Buttelmann D. Infants differentiate between successful and failed communication in a false-belief context. Infant Behav Dev 2022; 69:101770. [PMID: 36113367 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101770] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/14/2022] [Revised: 06/28/2022] [Accepted: 09/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Communication is based on social interaction, that is, interlocutors sharing attention to the intentions that they communicate about. In this study, we asked whether infants are aware of the fact that for information to be transferred, both interlocutors need to be present and share attention. Using a violation-of-expectation paradigm created to test infants' understanding of others' false beliefs, we asked whether 18-month-olds (n = 84) understood that correcting an agent's false belief via communication requires that the agent discerns the verbal statement. Participants saw how an agent put a toy into a box and left. An assistant then moved the toy into a cup. The intervention phase varied between three conditions: The agent and the assistant communicated about the actual location of the toy (full-communication), the agent was absent during the assistant's statement (incomplete-communication) or no communication took place (no-communication). At test, the agent reached into either the box or the cup. When no communication took place, infants expected the agent to search the toy at the original location. Full communication resulted in infants' expectations that the recipient's actions were altered, that is, the infants expected her to search the toy at the actual location. In contrast, incomplete communication did not yield clear expectations. Eighteen-month-olds thus seem to understand that for information to be transferred, it is a precondition that the recipient of the communicative act must be present and share attention during the communicator's statement. Only then communication can change a recipient's mental state.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cornelia Schulze
- Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Leipzig, Germany; Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development, Leipzig, Germany; University of Erfurt, Germany.
| | - David Buttelmann
- University of Erfurt, Germany; Department of Developmental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Switzerland
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21
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Heesen R, Fröhlich M, Sievers C, Woensdregt M, Dingemanse M. Coordinating social action: a primer for the cross-species investigation of communicative repair. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2022; 377:20210110. [PMID: 35876201 PMCID: PMC9310172 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0110] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2021] [Accepted: 12/06/2021] [Indexed: 09/14/2023] Open
Abstract
Human joint action is inherently cooperative, manifested in the collaborative efforts of participants to minimize communicative trouble through interactive repair. Although interactive repair requires sophisticated cognitive abilities, it can be dissected into basic building blocks shared with non-human animal species. A review of the primate literature shows that interactionally contingent signal sequences are at least common among species of non-human great apes, suggesting a gradual evolution of repair. To pioneer a cross-species assessment of repair this paper aims at (i) identifying necessary precursors of human interactive repair; (ii) proposing a coding framework for its comparative study in humans and non-human species; and (iii) using this framework to analyse examples of interactions of humans (adults/children) and non-human great apes. We hope this paper will serve as a primer for cross-species comparisons of communicative breakdowns and how they are repaired. This article is part of the theme issue 'Revisiting the human 'interaction engine': comparative approaches to social action coordination'.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Marlen Fröhlich
- Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Paleoanthropology, Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, University of Tübingen, Germany
| | | | - Marieke Woensdregt
- Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
| | - Mark Dingemanse
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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22
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Carruthers P, Williams DM. Model-free metacognition. Cognition 2022; 225:105117. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2021] [Revised: 03/25/2022] [Accepted: 03/31/2022] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
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23
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Stahl AE, Kibbe MM. Great expectations: The construct validity of the violation‐of‐expectation method for studying infant cognition. INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1002/icd.2359] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Aimee E. Stahl
- Department of Psychology The College of New Jersey Ewing New Jersey USA
| | - Melissa M. Kibbe
- Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Center for Systems Neuroscience Boston University Boston Massachusetts USA
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24
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Is cultural variation the norm? A closer look at sequencing of the theory of mind scale. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101216] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
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25
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Abstract
Concern over social scientists' inability to reproduce empirical research has spawned a vast and rapidly growing literature. The size and growth of this literature make it difficult for newly interested academics to come up to speed. Here, we provide a formal text modeling approach to characterize the entirety of the field, which allows us to summarize the breadth of this literature and identify core themes. We construct and analyze text networks built from 1,947 articles to reveal differences across social science disciplines within the body of reproducibility publications and to discuss the diversity of subtopics addressed in the literature. This field-wide view suggests that reproducibility is a heterogeneous problem with multiple sources for errors and strategies for solutions, a finding that is somewhat at odds with calls for largely passive remedies reliant on open science. We propose an alternative rigor and reproducibility model that takes an active approach to rigor prior to publication, which may overcome some of the shortfalls of the postpublication model.
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Affiliation(s)
- James W Moody
- Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
- Duke Network Analysis Center, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Lisa A Keister
- Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
- Duke Network Analysis Center, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
- Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Maria C Ramos
- Interdisciplinary Social Science Program, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
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26
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Moll H, Ni Q, Stekeler-Weithofer P. Ontogenetic steps of understanding beliefs: From practical to theoretical. PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 2022. [DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2022.2073211] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Henrike Moll
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Qianhui Ni
- Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States
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Mascaro O, Kovács Á. The origins of trust: Humans' reliance on communicative cues supersedes firsthand experience during the second year of life. Dev Sci 2021; 25:e13223. [PMID: 34962696 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13223] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2020] [Revised: 10/12/2021] [Accepted: 12/19/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
How do people learn about things that they have never perceived or inferred-like molecules, miracles or Marie-Antoinette? For many thinkers, trust is the answer. Humans rely on communicated information, sometimes even when it contradicts blatantly their firsthand experience. We investigate the early ontogeny of this trust using a non-verbal search paradigm in four main studies and three supplementary studies (N = 208). Infants and toddlers first see where a reward is, and then an informant communicates to them that it is in another location. We use this general experimental set-up to assess the role of age, informants' knowledge, cue's familiarity, and communicative context on trust in communicated information. Results reveal that infants and toddlers quickly trust familiar and novel communicative cues from well-informed adults. When searching for the reward, they follow a well-informed adults' communicative cue, even when it contradicts what they just saw. Furthermore, infants are less likely to be guided by familiar and novel cues from poorly informed adults than toddlers. Thus, reliance on communication is calibrated during early childhood, up to the point of overriding evidence about informants' knowledge. Moreover, toddlers trust much more strongly a novel cue when it is used in a communicative manner. Toddlers' trust cannot be explained by mere compliance: it is highly reduced when communicated information is pitted against what participants currently see. Thus, humans' strong tendency to rely on familiar and novel communicative cues emerges in infancy, and intensifies during the second year of life. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
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Affiliation(s)
- Olivier Mascaro
- CNRS/Université Paris Descartes, Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center UMR 8002, 45 rue des Saints Pères, Paris, 75014, France
| | - Ágnes Kovács
- Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, Nádor utca 9, 1051, Budapest
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28
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Kaltefleiter LJ, Schuwerk T, Wiesmann CG, Kristen-Antonow S, Jarvers I, Sodian B. Evidence for goal- and mixed evidence for false belief-based action prediction in two- to four-year-old children: A large-scale longitudinal anticipatory looking replication study. Dev Sci 2021; 25:e13224. [PMID: 34962028 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13224] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/11/2021] [Revised: 12/17/2021] [Accepted: 12/20/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Unsuccessful replication attempts of paradigms assessing children's implicit tracking of false beliefs have instigated the debate on whether or not children have an implicit understanding of false beliefs before the age of four. A novel multi-trial anticipatory looking false belief paradigm yielded evidence of implicit false belief reasoning in three- to four-year-old children using a combined score of two false belief conditions (Grosse Wiesmann, C., Friederici, A. D., Singer, T., & Steinbeis, N. [2017]. Developmental Science, 20(5), e12445). The present study is a large-scale replication attempt of this paradigm. The task was administered three times to the same sample of N = 185 children at two, three, and four years of age. Using the original stimuli, we did not replicate the original finding of above-chance belief-congruent looking in a combined score of two false belief conditions in either of the three age groups. Interestingly, the overall pattern of results was comparable to the original study. Post-hoc analyses revealed, however, that children performed above chance in one false belief condition (FB1) and below chance in the other false belief condition (FB2), thus yielding mixed evidence of children's false belief-based action predictions. Similar to the original study, participants' performance did not change with age and was not related to children's general language skills. This study demonstrates the importance of large-scaled replications and adds to the growing number of research questioning the validity and reliability of anticipatory looking false belief paradigms as a robust measure of children's implicit tracking of beliefs. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Tobias Schuwerk
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany
| | - Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann
- Minerva Fast Track Group Milestones of Early Cognitive Development, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
| | | | - Irina Jarvers
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany
| | - Beate Sodian
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany
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29
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Beyond knowledge versus belief: The contents of mental-state representations and their underlying computations. Behav Brain Sci 2021; 44:e141. [PMID: 34796826 DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x20001879] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
Moving beyond distinguishing knowledge and beliefs, we propose two lines of inquiry for the next generation of theory of mind (ToM) research: (1) characterizing the contents of different mental-state representations and (2) formalizing the computations that generate such contents. Studying how children reason about what others think of the self provides an illuminating window into the richness and flexibility of human social cognition.
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30
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The Developmental Differences of Implicit Theory of Mind in Infants Using Anticipatory Looking Paradigm. ADONGHAKOEJI 2021. [DOI: 10.5723/kjcs.2021.42.4.505] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Objectives: This study examined the developmental differences of implicit theory of mind in infants aged 12 to 24 months according to two types of tasks within the anticipatory looking paradigm, as well as the interaction between age group and type of task.Methods: In all, 69 infants participated in this study aged 12, 18, and 24 months. Two types of implicit false-belief tasks using an anticipatory looking paradigm were administered to all the infants for about 4 minutes 20 seconds. While all of the infants watched two types of computerized video clips (FB1, FB2) through the computer screen, an eye-tracker (TobiiX120) recorded the traces of anticipatory looking of infants. The anticipatory looking of infants in test trials was then analyzed.Results: Results showed that the differences between the 12-month-olds and the other age groups (18-month-olds, 24-month-olds) were significant, but even some of the 12-month-olds showed evidence of an implicit theory of mind. The level of implicit theory of mind of 18-month infants did not significantly differ from that of 24-month infants. In addition, a difference by type of implicit false-belief task was significant. Infants showed a higher level of implicit theory of mind in Task1 (FB1) than in Task2 (FB2). However, the interaction effect between age and type of task was not significant.Conclusion: The findings of this study hold implications for the development of implicit theory of mind early in life, and indicate the validity of the anticipatory looking paradigm with two types of tasks. Several limitations and suggestions for future study are also presented.
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31
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Kampis D, Kármán P, Csibra G, Southgate V, Hernik M. A two-lab direct replication attempt of Southgate, Senju and Csibra (2007). ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2021; 8:210190. [PMID: 34457336 PMCID: PMC8386515 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.210190] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2021] [Accepted: 07/15/2021] [Indexed: 05/29/2023]
Abstract
The study by Southgate et al. (2007 Psychol. Sci. 18, 587-592. (doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x)) has been widely cited as evidence for false-belief attribution in young children. Recent replication attempts of this paradigm have yielded mixed results: several studies did not replicate the original findings, raising doubts about the suitability of the paradigm to assess non-verbal action prediction and Theory of Mind. In a preregistered collaborative study including two of the original authors, we tested one hundred and sixty 24- to 26-month-olds across two locations using the original stimuli, procedure and analyses as closely as possible. We found no evidence for action anticipation: only roughly half of the infants looked to the location of an agent's impending action when action prediction did not require taking into account the agent's beliefs and a similar number when the agent held a false-belief. These results and other non-replications suggest that this paradigm does not reliably elicit action prediction and thus cannot assess false-belief understanding in 2-year-olds. While the present results do not support any claim regarding the presence or absence of Theory of Mind in infants, we conclude that an important piece of evidence that has to date supported arguments for the existence of this competence can no longer serve that function.
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Affiliation(s)
- D. Kampis
- Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - P. Kármán
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
| | - G. Csibra
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
| | - V. Southgate
- Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - M. Hernik
- Department of Psychology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
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32
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Small procedural differences matter: Conceptual and direct replication attempts of the communication-intervention effect on infants’ false-belief ascriptions. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101054] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
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33
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Kong Q, Cheung H. Investigating 18-month-olds’ association-based inferences in an interactive unexpected-identity paradigm. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101051] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
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34
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Rubio-Fernandez P, Southgate V, Király I. Pragmatics for infants: commentary on Wenzel et al. (2020). ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2021; 8:210247. [PMID: 34109044 PMCID: PMC8170227 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.210247] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/12/2021] [Accepted: 04/20/2021] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Ildikó Király
- Psychology Institute, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
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35
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Crivello C, Grossman S, Poulin-Dubois D. Specifying links between infants' theory of mind, associative learning, and selective trust. INFANCY 2021; 26:664-685. [PMID: 34043285 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12407] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/12/2019] [Revised: 03/28/2021] [Accepted: 04/16/2021] [Indexed: 01/04/2023]
Abstract
The psychological mechanisms underlying infants' selective social learning are currently a subject of controversy. The main goal of the present study was to contribute data to this debate by investigating whether domain-specific or domain-general abilities guide infants' selectivity. Eighteen-month-olds observed a reliable and an unreliable speaker, and then completed a forced-choice word learning paradigm, two theory of mind tasks, and an associative learning task. Results revealed that infants showed sensitivity to the verbal competence of the speaker. Additionally, infants with superior knowledge inference abilities were less likely to learn from the unreliable speaker. No link was observed between selective social learning and associative learning skills. These results replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating that socio-cognitive abilities are linked to infants' selective social learning.
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36
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Theobald M, Brod G. Tackling Scientific Misconceptions: The Element of Surprise. Child Dev 2021; 92:2128-2141. [PMID: 33969879 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13582] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/24/2023]
Abstract
Misconceptions about scientific concepts often prevail even if learners are confronted with conflicting evidence. This study tested the facilitative role of surprise in children's revision of misconceptions regarding water displacement in a sample of German children (N = 94, aged 6-9 years, 46% female). Surprise was measured via the pupil dilation response. It was induced by letting children generate predictions before presenting them with outcomes that conflicted with their misconception. Compared to a control condition, generating predictions boosted children's surprise and led to a greater revision of misconceptions (d = 0.56). Surprise further predicted successful belief revision during the learning phase. These results suggest that surprise increases the salience of a cognitive conflict, thereby facilitating the revision of misconceptions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Theobald
- DIPF, Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education.,Center for Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA)
| | - Garvin Brod
- DIPF, Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education.,Center for Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA).,Goethe University Frankfurt
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Bednarz HM, Kana RK, Svancara AM, Sherrod GM, Stavrinos D. Neuropsychological predictors of driving hazard detection in autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. Child Neuropsychol 2021; 27:857-887. [PMID: 33881380 DOI: 10.1080/09297049.2021.1908531] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Driving is a neuropsychologically complex task; this can present challenges for individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) such asautism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Deficits in theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF) are common features of ASD and ADHD, respectively, and may influence driving processes such as hazard perception. No studies have directly examined the neuropsychological contributions to hazard detection among drivers with ASD compared to ADHD.In the current study, 48 participants ages 16-30 years (13 ASD, 17 ADHD, 18 typically developing (TD)) completed a driving simulator task in which they encountered hazards in the driving environment. Hazards varied in whether they were social (contained a human component) or nonsocial (were physical objects) to examine the contribution of ToM and social processing to hazard response. Additionally, participants completed a neuropsychological battery targeting ToM and EF/attention skills (cognitive tasks and self-report measures).Within the ASD group, participants responded relatively slower to social compared to nonsocial hazards; no effect of hazard type was observed in the ADHD or TD groups. Additionally, measures of ToM and EF were correlated with driving performanceamong ASD participants; within the ADHD group, only self-reported behavior regulation was associated with driving performance. Broadly, this suggests that cognitive factors such as ToM and EF impact driving hazard performance in ASD and ADHD. The results of the study have implications for developing driving intervention programs for individuals with NDDs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haley M Bednarz
- Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA
| | - Rajesh K Kana
- University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA.,Department of Psychology & The Center for Innovative Research in Autism, University of Alabama, USA
| | - Austin M Svancara
- Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA
| | - Gabriela M Sherrod
- Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA
| | - Despina Stavrinos
- Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA
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Hayashi T, Akikawa R, Kawasaki K, Egawa J, Minamimoto T, Kobayashi K, Kato S, Hori Y, Nagai Y, Iijima A, Someya T, Hasegawa I. Macaques Exhibit Implicit Gaze Bias Anticipating Others' False-Belief-Driven Actions via Medial Prefrontal Cortex. Cell Rep 2021; 30:4433-4444.e5. [PMID: 32234478 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2020.03.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 49] [Impact Index Per Article: 16.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/01/2019] [Revised: 12/23/2019] [Accepted: 03/05/2020] [Indexed: 02/08/2023] Open
Abstract
The ability to infer others' mental states is essential to social interactions. This ability, critically evaluated by testing whether one attributes false beliefs (FBs) to others, has been considered to be uniquely hominid and to accompany the activation of a distributed brain network. We challenge the taxon specificity of this ability and identify the causal brain locus by introducing an anticipatory-looking FB paradigm combined with chemogenetic neuronal manipulation in macaque monkeys. We find spontaneous gaze bias of macaques implicitly anticipating others' FB-driven actions. Silencing of the medial prefrontal neuronal activity with inhibitory designer receptor exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADDs) specifically eliminates the implicit gaze bias while leaving the animals' visually guided and memory-guided tracking abilities intact. Thus, neuronal activity in the medial prefrontal cortex could have a causal role in FB-attribution-like behaviors in the primate lineage, emphasizing the importance of probing the neuronal mechanisms underlying theory of mind with relevant macaque animal models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Taketsugu Hayashi
- Department of Psychiatry, Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Niigata, Japan; Department of Physiology, Niigata University School of Medicine, Niigata, Japan
| | - Ryota Akikawa
- Department of Physiology, Niigata University School of Medicine, Niigata, Japan; Graduate School of Science and Technology, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan
| | - Keisuke Kawasaki
- Department of Physiology, Niigata University School of Medicine, Niigata, Japan
| | - Jun Egawa
- Department of Psychiatry, Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Niigata, Japan
| | - Takafumi Minamimoto
- Functional Brain Imaging, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, National Institute for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Chiba, Japan
| | - Kazuto Kobayashi
- Department of Molecular Genetics, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan
| | - Shigeki Kato
- Department of Molecular Genetics, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan
| | - Yukiko Hori
- Functional Brain Imaging, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, National Institute for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Chiba, Japan
| | - Yuji Nagai
- Functional Brain Imaging, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, National Institute for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Chiba, Japan
| | - Atsuhiko Iijima
- Graduate School of Science and Technology, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan; School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Niigata University, Niigata, Japan; Interdisciplinary Program of Biomedical Engineering, Assistive Technology, and Art and Sports Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, Niigata University. Niigata, Japan
| | - Toshiyuki Someya
- Department of Psychiatry, Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Niigata, Japan.
| | - Isao Hasegawa
- Department of Physiology, Niigata University School of Medicine, Niigata, Japan.
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Three-year-olds' spontaneous lying in a novel interaction-based paradigm and its relations to explicit skills and motivational factors. J Exp Child Psychol 2021; 207:105125. [PMID: 33761406 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105125] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2020] [Revised: 01/29/2021] [Accepted: 02/02/2021] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Abstract
Previous research has investigated children's lying and its motivational and social-cognitive correlates mostly through explicit tasks. The current study used an anticipatory interaction-based paradigm adopted from research with preverbal infants. We investigated 3-year-olds' spontaneous lying within interaction and its motivational basis and relations to explicit skills of lying, false belief understanding, inhibitory control, and socialization. Children interacted with puppets to secure stickers that were hidden in one of two boxes. Either a friend or a competitor puppet tried to obtain the stickers. Nearly all children helpfully provided information about the sticker's location to the friend, and about half of the sample anticipatorily provided false information to the competitor. Children misinformed the competitor significantly more often than the friend, both when the reward was for themselves and when it was for someone else. Explicitly planning to lie in response to a question occurred significantly less often but predicted spontaneous lying, as did passing the explicit standard false belief task. Thus, by 3 years of age, children spontaneously invoke false beliefs in others. This communicative skill reveals an interactional use of false belief understanding in that it requires holding one's perspective to pursue one's goal while providing a different perspective to distract a competitor. Findings support the view that practical theory of mind skills emerge for social coordination and serve as a basis for developing explicit false belief reasoning.
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40
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Kulke L, Hinrichs MAB. Implicit Theory of Mind under realistic social circumstances measured with mobile eye-tracking. Sci Rep 2021; 11:1215. [PMID: 33441890 PMCID: PMC7806733 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-80614-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/02/2019] [Accepted: 12/21/2020] [Indexed: 01/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Recently, there has been a debate whether implicit Theory of Mind can be reliably measured using anticipatory looking tasks. Previous anticipatory looking paradigms used video stimuli to measure implicit Theory of Mind; however, numerous replications of these paradigms were unsuccessful. This lack of replications may be due to video stimuli not being sufficiently engaging. As Theory of Mind is an inherently social phenomenon, robust evidence might only be observed in a real social situation. Therefore, the current preregistered study aimed to test anticipatory looking with real-life social stimuli. A mobile eye-tracker was used to measure gaze patterns indicative of Theory of Mind while participants observed a real-life interaction of an experimenter and a confederate. The realistic scenario did not provide clear evidence for implicit Theory of Mind. Furthermore, anticipatory looking behavior did not reliably occur during familiarization trials, in line with previous research. However, looking patterns were slightly more in line with belief tracking than in some more controlled studies using video stimuli. In general, implicit Theory of Mind was not reliably reflected in anticipatory looking patterns even if they were measured in realistic social situations. This questions the suitability of anticipatory looking measures for implicit Theory of Mind.
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Affiliation(s)
- Louisa Kulke
- grid.7450.60000 0001 2364 4210Department of Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology, Georg-August University Göttingen, Goßlerstr. 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany ,grid.5330.50000 0001 2107 3311Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Max Andreas Bosse Hinrichs
- grid.7450.60000 0001 2364 4210Department of Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology, Georg-August University Göttingen, Goßlerstr. 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
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41
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Barone P, Gomila A. Infants' performance in the indirect false belief tasks: A second-person interpretation. WILEY INTERDISCIPLINARY REVIEWS. COGNITIVE SCIENCE 2020; 12:e1551. [PMID: 33319503 PMCID: PMC9285846 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1551] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/06/2020] [Revised: 11/13/2020] [Accepted: 11/16/2020] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
Research in the last 15 years has challenged the idea that false belief attribution develops at 4 years of age. Studies with indirect false belief tasks contend to provide evidence of false belief attribution in the second year of life. We review the literature on indirect false belief tasks carried out in infants using looking and active helping paradigms. Although the results are heterogeneous and not conclusive, such tasks appear to capture a real effect. However, it is misleading to call them “false belief” tasks, as it is possible to pass them without making any false belief attribution. Infants need to keep track of the object's and agent's positions, trajectories, and focus of attention, given an intentional understanding of the agent, to pass these new tasks. We, therefore, argue that the evidence can be better explained in terms of second‐person attributions, which are transparent, extensional, nonpropositional, reciprocally contingent, and implicit. Second‐person attributions can also account for primates' mentalizing abilities, as revealed by similar indirect tasks. This article is categorized under:Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development Philosophy > Foundations of Cognitive Science Cognitive Biology > Evolutionary Roots of Cognition
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Affiliation(s)
- Pamela Barone
- Department of Psychology, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain.,Human Evolution and Cognition Group (EvoCog), University of the Balearic Islands, Illes Balears, Spain
| | - Antoni Gomila
- Department of Psychology, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain.,Human Evolution and Cognition Group (EvoCog), University of the Balearic Islands, Illes Balears, Spain
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42
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Poulin-Dubois D, Azar N, Elkaim B, Burnside K. Testing the stability of theory of mind: A longitudinal approach. PLoS One 2020; 15:e0241721. [PMID: 33152000 PMCID: PMC7644065 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241721] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2020] [Accepted: 10/19/2020] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
An explicit understanding of false belief develops around the age of four years. However, tasks based on spontaneous responses have revealed an implicit understanding of belief and other theory of mind constructs in infants in their second year of life. The few longitudinal studies that have examined conceptual continuity of theory of mind from infancy to early childhood have reported mixed findings. Here we report two longitudinal experiments to investigate the developmental relation between implicit and explicit theory of mind. No link was observed in the first experiment between false belief and intention understanding measured at 14 and 18 months with the violation of expectation paradigm and tasks measuring explicit and implicit false belief at four or five years of age. In the second experiment, infants aged 18 months were tested with a battery of tasks that measured knowledge inference and false belief. They were then tested with the theory of mind scale at five years of age. The parents completed the Children's Social Understanding Scale (CSUS) and the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ). As in the first experiment, there were no associations between early and later forms of theory of mind. We suggest that these findings do not support the view that there is conceptual continuity in theory of mind development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Diane Poulin-Dubois
- Psychology Department, Centre for Research in Human Development, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
| | - Naomi Azar
- Psychology Department, Centre for Research in Human Development, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
| | - Brandon Elkaim
- Psychology Department, Centre for Research in Human Development, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
| | - Kimberly Burnside
- Psychology Department, Centre for Research in Human Development, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
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43
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Wenzel L, Dörrenberg S, Proft M, Liszkowski U, Rakoczy H. Actions do not speak louder than words in an interactive false belief task. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2020; 7:191998. [PMID: 33204438 PMCID: PMC7657934 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.191998] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/08/2019] [Accepted: 09/16/2020] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Traditionally, it had been assumed that meta-representational Theory of Mind (ToM) emerges around the age of 4 when children come to master standard false belief (FB) tasks. More recent research with various implicit measures, though, has documented much earlier competence and thus challenged the traditional picture. In interactive FB tasks, for instance, infants have been shown to track an interlocutor's false or true belief when interpreting her ambiguous communicative acts (Southgate et al. 2010 Dev. Sci. 13, 907-912. (doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00946.x)). However, several replication attempts so far have produced mixed findings (e.g. Dörrenberg et al. 2018 Cogn. Dev. 46, 12-30. (doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.01.001); Grosse Wiesmann et al. 2017 Dev. Sci. 20, e12445. (doi:10.1111/desc.12445); Király et al. 2018 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 11 477-11 482. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1803505115)). Therefore, we conducted a systematic replication study, across two laboratories, of an influential interactive FB task (the so-called 'Sefo' tasks by Southgate et al. 2010 Dev. Sci. 13, 907-912. (doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00946.x)). First, we implemented close direct replications with the original age group (17-month-olds) and compared their performance to those of 3-year-olds. Second, we designed conceptual replications with modifications and improvements regarding pragmatic ambiguities for 2-year-olds. Third, we validated the task with explicit verbal test versions in older children and adults. Results revealed the following: the original results could not be replicated, and there was no evidence for FB understanding measured by the Sefo task in any age group except for adults. Comparisons to explicit FB tasks suggest that the Sefo task may not be a sensitive measure of FB understanding in children and even underestimate their ToM abilities. The findings add to the growing replication crisis in implicit ToM research and highlight the challenge of developing sensitive, reliable and valid measures of early implicit social cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lisa Wenzel
- Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
| | - Sebastian Dörrenberg
- Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of Bremen, Hochschulring 18, 28359 Bremen, Germany
- Developmental Psychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
| | - Marina Proft
- Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
| | - Ulf Liszkowski
- Developmental Psychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
| | - Hannes Rakoczy
- Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
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44
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Abstract
Research on the capacity to understand others' minds has tended to focus on representations of beliefs, which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations of knowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one doesn't even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across cognitive science, we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that non-human primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge (but not belief) attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibit a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind-one that is focused on understanding others' minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it.
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45
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Theory of mind development: State of the science and future directions. PROGRESS IN BRAIN RESEARCH 2020; 254:141-166. [PMID: 32859285 DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2020.05.021] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/07/2023]
Abstract
This chapter offers a brief overview of how research on theory of mind development has developed over the recent years, with a focus on current research and theoretical accounts of theory of mind during the infancy period. The topics covered include the factors contributing to individual differences in theory of mind skills in preschoolers, the current replication crisis in theory of mind in infancy, the stability of theory of mind from infancy to childhood, and recent research suggesting that infants' concept of false belief is, at best, immature (e.g., overattribution to inanimate agents). Future directions in theory of mind research are suggested.
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46
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Sodian B, Kristen‐Antonow S, Kloo D. How Does Children’s Theory of Mind Become Explicit? A Review of Longitudinal Findings. CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES 2020. [DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12381] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Beate Sodian
- Department of Psychology Ludwig‐Maximilian‐University
| | | | - Daniela Kloo
- Department of Psychology Ludwig‐Maximilian‐University
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47
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Zhang F, Emberson LL. Using pupillometry to investigate predictive processes in infancy. INFANCY 2020; 25:758-780. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12358] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/05/2019] [Revised: 06/30/2020] [Accepted: 07/06/2020] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Felicia Zhang
- Department of Psychology Princeton University Princeton New Jersey USA
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48
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Horschler DJ, MacLean EL, Santos LR. Do Non-Human Primates Really Represent Others' Beliefs? Trends Cogn Sci 2020; 24:594-605. [PMID: 32593501 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.05.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/05/2020] [Revised: 04/28/2020] [Accepted: 05/21/2020] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
Over two decades of research have produced compelling evidence that non-human primates understand some psychological states in other individuals but are unable to represent others' beliefs. Recently, three studies employing anticipatory looking (AL) paradigms reported that non-human primates do show hints of implicitly understanding the beliefs of others. However, measures of AL have been increasingly scrutinized in the human literature owing to extensive replication problems. We argue that new reports of belief representation in non-human primates using AL should be interpreted cautiously because of methodological and theoretical challenges paralleling trends in the human literature. We explore how future work can address these challenges, and conclude by identifying new evolutionary questions raised by the prospect that non-human primates implicitly represent others' beliefs without an explicit belief representation system that guides fitness-relevant behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel J Horschler
- School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; Cognitive Science Program, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA.
| | - Evan L MacLean
- School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; Cognitive Science Program, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
| | - Laurie R Santos
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
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49
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Abstract
The adaptive features of cognitive mechanisms, the features that make them fit for purpose, have traditionally been explained by nature and nurture. In the last decade, evidence has emerged that distinctively human cognitive mechanisms are also, and predominantly, shaped by culture. Like physical technology, human cognitive mechanisms are inherited via social interaction and made fit for purpose by culture evolution. This article surveys evidence from developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and cognitive neuroscience indicating that imitation, mentalizing, and language are “cognitive gadgets” shaped predominantly by cultural evolution. This evidence does not imply that the minds of newborn babies are blank slates. Rather, it implies that genetic evolution has made subtle changes to the human mind, allowing us to construct cognitive gadgets in the course of childhood through cultural learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cecilia Heyes
- All Souls College and Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
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50
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Beaudoin C, Leblanc É, Gagner C, Beauchamp MH. Systematic Review and Inventory of Theory of Mind Measures for Young Children. Front Psychol 2020; 10:2905. [PMID: 32010013 PMCID: PMC6974541 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02905] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/13/2019] [Accepted: 12/09/2019] [Indexed: 12/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Theory of mind (TOM), the ability to infer mental states to self and others, has been a pervasive research theme across many disciplines including developmental, educational, neuro-, and social psychology, social neuroscience and speech therapy. TOM abilities have been consistently linked to markers of social adaptation and have been shown to be affected in a broad range of clinical conditions. Despite the wealth and breadth of research dedicated to TOM, identifying appropriate assessment tools for young children remains challenging. This systematic review presents an inventory of TOM measures for children aged 0-5 years and provides details on their content and characteristics. Electronic databases (1983-2019) and 9 test publisher catalogs were systematically reviewed. In total, 220 measures, identified within 830 studies, were found to assess the understanding of seven categories of mental states and social situations: emotions, desires, intentions, percepts, knowledge, beliefs and mentalistic understanding of non-literal communication, and pertained to 39 types of TOM sub-abilities. Information on the measures' mode of presentation, number of items, scoring options, and target populations were extracted, and psychometric details are listed in summary tables. The results of the systematic review are summarized in a visual framework "Abilities in Theory of Mind Space" (ATOMS) which provides a new taxonomy of TOM sub-domains. This review highlights the remarkable variety of measures that have been created to assess TOM, but also the numerous methodological and psychometric challenges associated with developing and choosing appropriate measures, including issues related to the limited range of sub-abilities targeted, lack of standardization across studies and paucity of psychometric information provided.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cindy Beaudoin
- Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
- Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center, Montreal, QC, Canada
| | - Élizabel Leblanc
- Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
| | - Charlotte Gagner
- Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
- Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center, Montreal, QC, Canada
| | - Miriam H. Beauchamp
- Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
- Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center, Montreal, QC, Canada
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