Seeking evidence and explanation signals religious and scientific commitments

Who is more committed to science: the person who learns about a scientific consensus and doesn't ask questions, or the person who learns about a scientific consensus and decides to pursue further inquiry? Who exhibits greater commitment to religious teachings: the person who accepts doctrine without question, or the person who seeks further evidence and explanations? Across three experiments (N = 801) we investigate the inferences drawn about an individual on the basis of their epistemic behavior - in particular, their decision to pursue or forgo further inquiry (evidence or explanation) about scientific or religious claims. We find that the decision to pursue further inquiry (about science or religion) is taken to signal greater commitment to science and to truth, as well as trustworthiness and good moral character (Studies 1-3). This is true even in the case of claims regarding controversial science topics, such as anthropogenic climate change (Study 3). In contrast, the decision to forgo further inquiry is taken to signal greater commitment to religion, but only when the claim under consideration contains religious content (Study 1-3). These findings shed light on perceived scientific and religious norms in our predominantly American and Christian sample, as well as the rich social inferences drawn on the basis of epistemic behavior.

Children Change Their Answers in Response to Neutral Follow-Up Questions by a Knowledgeable Asker

Burgeoning evidence suggests that when children observe data, they use knowledge of the demonstrator's intent to augment learning. We propose that the effects of social learning may go beyond cases where children observe data, to cases where they receive no new information at all. We present a model of how simply asking a question a second time may lead to belief revision, when the questioner is expected to know the correct answer. We provide an analysis of the CHILDES corpus to show that these neutral follow‐up questions are used in parent–child conversations. We then present three experiments investigating 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children's reactions to neutral follow‐up questions posed by ignorant or knowledgeable questioners. Children were more likely to change their answers in response to a neutral follow‐up question from a knowledgeable questioner than an ignorant one. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of common practices in legal, educational, and experimental psychological settings.

Social Inferences in Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum and Autism: Semantic Analysis and Topic Modeling

Impoverished capacity for social inference is one of several symptoms that are common to both agenesis of the corpus callosum (AgCC) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This research compared the ability of 14 adults with AgCC, 13 high-functioning adults with ASD and 14 neurotypical controls to accurately attribute social meaning to the interactions of animated triangles. Descriptions of the animations were analyzed in three ways: subjective ratings, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, and topic modeling (Latent Dirichlet Allocation). Although subjective ratings indicated that all groups made similar inferences from the animations, the index of perplexity (atypicality of topic) generated from topic modeling revealed that inferences from individuals with AgCC or ASD displayed significantly less social imagination than those of controls.

Inferring Behavior From Partial Social Information Plays Little or No Role in the Cultural Transmission of Adaptive Traits

Many human cultural traits become increasingly beneficial as they are repeatedly transmitted, thanks to an accumulation of modifications made by successive generations. But how do later generations typically avoid modifications which revert traits to less beneficial forms already sampled and rejected by earlier generations? And how can later generations do so without direct exposure to their predecessors' behavior? One possibility is that learners are sensitive to cues of non-random production in others' behavior, and that particular variants (e.g., those containing structural regularities unlikely to occur spontaneously) have been produced deliberately and with some effort. If this non-random behavior is attributed to an informed strategy, then the learner may infer that apparent avoidance of certain possibilities indicates that these have already been sampled and rejected. This could potentially prevent performance plateaus resulting from learners modifying inherited behaviors randomly. We test this hypothesis in four experiments in which participants, either individually or in interacting dyads, attempt to locate rewards in a search grid, guided by partial information about another individual's experience of the task. We find that in some contexts, valid inferences about another's behavior can be made from partial information, and these inferences can be used in a way which facilitates trait adaptation. However, the benefit of these inferences appears to be limited, and in many contexts-including some which have the potential to make inferring the experience of another individual easier-there appears to be no benefit at all. We suggest that inferring previous behavior from partial social information plays a minimal role in the adaptation of cultural traits.

Mentalizing during social InterAction: A four component model

Mentalizing, conventionally defined as the process in which we infer the inner thoughts and intentions of others, is a fundamental component of human social cognition. Yet its role, and the nuanced layers involved, in real world social interaction are rarely discussed. To account for this lack of theory, we propose the interactive mentalizing theory (IMT) -to emphasize the role of metacognition in different mentalizing components. We discuss the connection between mentalizing, metacognition, and social interaction in the context of four elements of mentalizing: (i) Metacognition-inference of our own thought processes and social cognitions and which is central to all other components of mentalizing including: (ii) first-order mentalizing-inferring the thoughts and intentions of an agent's mind; (iii) personal second-order mentalizing-inference of other's mentalizing of one's own mind; (iv) Collective mentalizing: which takes at least two forms (a) vicarious mentalizing: adopting another's mentalizing of an agent (i.e., what we think others think of an agent) and (b) co-mentalizing: mentalizing about an agent in conjunction with others' mentalizing of that agent (i.e., conforming to others beliefs about another agent's internal states). The weights of these four elements is determined by metacognitive insight and confidence in one's own or another's mentalizing ability, yielding a dynamic interaction between these circuits. To advance our knowledge on mentalizing during live social interaction, we identify how these subprocesses can be organized by different target agents and facilitated by combining computational modeling and interactive brain approaches.

Understanding Others' Minds: Social Inference in Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The study used an eye-tracking task to investigate whether preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are able to make inferences about others' behavior in terms of their mental states in a social setting. Fifty typically developing (TD) 4- and 5-year-olds and 22 5-year-olds with ASD participated in the study, where their eye-movements were recorded as automatic responses to given situations. The results show that unlike their TD peers, children with ASD failed to exhibit eye gaze patterns that reflect their ability to infer about others' behavior by spontaneously encoding socially relevant information and attributing mental states to others. Implications of the findings were discussed in relation to the proposal that implicit/spontaneous Theory of Mind is persistently impaired in ASD.

Children's accent-based inferences depend on geographic background

Young children make inferences about speakers based on their accents. Here, we show that these accent-based inferences are influenced by information about speakers' geographic backgrounds. In Experiment 1, 4- to 6-year-olds (N = 60) inferred that a speaker would be more likely to have the same cultural preferences as another speaker with the same accent than a speaker with a different accent; in Experiment 2 (N = 90), children made similar inferences about speakers' friendship preferences. Critically, in both experiments, children were less likely to make accent-based inferences when they were told that the speakers all came from different places (both experiments) or from the same place (Experiment 2). These results suggest that young children's accent-based inferences hinge on information about geographic background and provide insight into how and why children make accent-based inferences. These findings are also the first to show that young children use accent to infer other people's social preferences.

I know why you voted for Trump: (Over)inferring motives based on choice

People often speculate about why others make the choices they do. This paper investigates how such inferences are formed as a function of what is chosen. Specifically, when observers encounter someone else's choice (e.g., of political candidate), they use the chosen option's attribute values (e.g., a candidate's specific stance on a policy issue) to infer the importance of that attribute (e.g., the policy issue) to the decision-maker. Consequently, when a chosen option has an attribute whose value is extreme (e.g., an extreme policy stance), observers infer-sometimes incorrectly-that this attribute disproportionately motivated the decision-maker's choice. Seven studies demonstrate how observers use an attribute's value to infer its weight-the value-weight heuristic-and identify the role of perceived diagnosticity: more extreme attribute values give observers the subjective sense that they know more about a decision-maker's preferences, and in turn, increase the attribute's perceived importance. The paper explores how this heuristic can produce erroneous inferences and influence broader beliefs about decision-makers.

The Social Attribution Task - Multiple Choice (SAT-MC): Psychometric comparison with social cognitive measures for schizophrenia research

The Social Attribution Task-Multiple Choice (SAT-MC) tests the ability to extract social themes from viewed object motion. This form of animacy perception is thought to aid the development of social inference, but appears impaired in schizophrenia. The current study was undertaken to examine psychometric equivalence of two forms of the SAT-MC and to compare their performance against social cognitive tests recommended for schizophrenia research. Thirty-two schizophrenia (SZ) and 30 substance use disorder (SUD) participants completed both SAT-MC forms, the Bell-Lysaker Emotion Recognition Task (BLERT), Hinting Task, The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT), Ambiguous Intentions and Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ) and questionnaire measures of interpersonal function. Test sensitivity, construct and external validity, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency were evaluated. SZ scored significantly lower than SUD on both SAT-MC forms, each classifying ~60% of SZ as impaired, compared with ~30% of SUD. SAT-MC forms demonstrated good test-retest and parallel form reliability, minimal practice effect, high internal consistency, and similar patterns of correlation with social cognitive and external validity measures. The SAT-MC compared favorably to recommended social cognitive tests across psychometric features and, with exception of TASIT, was most sensitive to impairment in schizophrenia when compared to a chronic substance use sample.

Alexithymia, empathy, emotion identification and social inference in anorexia nervosa: A case-control study

Alexithymia, difficulties in facial emotion recognition, poor socio-relational skills are typical of anorexia nervosa (AN). We assessed patients with AN and healthy controls (HCs) with mixed stimuli: questionnaires (Toronto Alexithymia Scale-TAS, Interpersonal Reactivity Index-IRI), photographs (Facial Emotion Identification Test-FEIT) and dynamic images (The Awareness of Social Inference Test-TASIT). TAS and IRI Personal Distress (PD) were higher in AN than HCs. Few or no differences emerged at the FEIT and TASIT, respectively. Larger effect sizes were found for the TAS results. Despite higher levels of alexithymia, patients with AN seem to properly acknowledge others' emotions while being inhibited in the expression of their own.

Where are you from? Preschoolers infer background from accent

For adults, accent is an obvious indicator of a speaker's geographical background. The current study investigated whether preschoolers are sensitive to the relationship between background and accent. Experiment 1 shows that 3- to 5-year-olds believe that two speakers who share the same accent live in the same place but do not share the same personal preferences. Experiment 2 demonstrates that 4- and 5-year-olds believe that two speakers with the same accent share cultural norms associated with a particular place, but that two speakers with different accents have different cultural norms. As in Experiment 1, children did not think that personal preferences were related to accent. These findings show early awareness of the relationship between accent and geographical background.