Are there signature limits in early theory of mind?

Fizke, Ella; Butterfill, Stephen A.; Loo, Lea van de; Reindl, Eva; Rakoczy, Hannes

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2017.05.005

Cited by 50 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The toddlers reacted differently to the agent's true versus false belief only when aspectuality was not involved in the task. This pattern was taken as an indication of conceptual deficits in infants and is in line with the finding that below the age of two, they are capable of tracking mental states and can master implicit FB tasks as long as an understanding of aspectuality or of other propositional attitudes is not necessary to pass the test [22][23][24][25].…”

Section: Early Tomsupporting

confidence: 68%

“…A recent study revealed the significance of another characteristic of implicit ToM tasks. Fizke et al [22] tracked the helping behavior of 2-to-3-year-old children in two versions of a FB task: one version included aspectuality whereas the other version of the task did not. Aspectuality denotes incompatible beliefs about an object or a person under two different aspects, for example knowing the person Clark Kent as himself versus knowing him as Superman without being aware of his private identity.…”

Section: Early Tommentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Lens Shapes the View: on Task Dependency in ToM Research

Breil

Böckler

2020

Curr Behav Neurosci Rep

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Purpose of Review This article provides an overview of current findings on Theory of Mind (ToM) in human children and adults and highlights the relationship between task specifications and their outcome in socio-cognitive research. Recent Findings ToM, the capacity to reason about and infer others' mental states, develops progressively throughout childhood-the exact time course is still a matter of debate. Neuroimaging studies indicate the involvement of a widespread neuronal network during mentalizing, suggesting that ToM is a multifaceted process. Accordingly, the tasks and trainings that currently exist to investigate and enhance ToM are heterogeneous, and the outcomes largely depend on the paradigm that was used. Summary We argue for the implementation of multiple-task batteries in the assessment of socio-cognitive abilities. Decisions for a particular paradigm need to be carefully considered and justified. We want to emphasize the importance of targeted research on the relationship between task specifications and outcomes.

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Section: Early Tomsupporting

confidence: 68%

Section: Early Tommentioning

confidence: 99%

The Lens Shapes the View: on Task Dependency in ToM Research

Breil

Böckler

2020

Curr Behav Neurosci Rep

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“…However, a recent study by Fizke and colleagues would appear to be at odds with this pattern of positive findings (Fizke, Butterfill, van de Loo, Reindl, & Rakoczy, 2017). In this study, 2.5-year-olds were tested in a non-elicited-response task modeled after the helping paradigm devised by Buttelman, Carpenter, and Tomasello (2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

2.5-year-olds succeed in identity and location elicited-response false-belief tasks with adequate response practice

Scott

Roby

Setoh

2020

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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Researchers have argued that traditional elicited-response false-belief tasks involve considerable processing demands and hence underestimate children's false-belief understanding. Consistent with this claim, Setoh et al. (2016) recently found that when processing demands were sufficiently reduced, children could succeed in an elicited-response task as early as 2.5 years of age. Here we examined whether 2.5-year-olds could also succeed in a low-demand elicitedresponse task involving false beliefs about identity, which have been argued to provide a critical test of whether children truly represent beliefs, while also clarifying how the practice trials in Setoh et al.'s task facilitated children's elicited-response performance. 2.5-year-olds were tested in a version of Setoh et al.'s elicited-response task in which they heard a location or identity false-belief story. We varied whether the practice trials had the same type of wh-question as the test trial. Children who heard the same type of wh-question on all trials succeeded regardless of which story they heard (location or identity) and performance did not differ across belief type. This replicates Setoh et al.'s positive results and demonstrates that when processing demands are sufficiently reduced, children can succeed in elicited-response tasks involving false beliefs about object location or identity. This suggests that children are capable of attributing genuine false beliefs prior to age 4. However, children performed at chance if the practice trials involved a different type of wh-question than the test trials, suggesting that at this age, practice with the whquestion used in the test trial is essential to children's success.

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“…Accordingly, they can accurately anticipate an agent's action in change-of-location false-belief tasks, the paradigms most commonly used in research with human infants and nonhuman animals. Critically, the signature limit of such a minimal system is its inability to track genuine beliefs about object identity (36,37). Testing this limitation in the future will be important for precisely specifying the representational mechanisms underlying action anticipation in both human and nonhuman primates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Great apes use self-experience to anticipate an agent’s action in a false-belief test

Kano

Krupenye

Tomonaga

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

170

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Human social life depends on theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others. A signature of theory of mind, false belief understanding, requires representing others’ views of the world, even when they conflict with one’s own. After decades of research, it remains controversial whether any nonhuman species possess a theory of mind. One challenge to positive evidence of animal theory of mind, the behavior-rule account, holds that animals solve such tasks by responding to others’ behavioral cues rather than their mental states. We distinguish these hypotheses by implementing a version of the “goggles” test, which asks whether, in the absence of any additional behavioral cues, animals can use their own self-experience of a novel barrier being translucent or opaque to determine whether another agent can see through the same barrier. We incorporated this paradigm into an established anticipatory-looking false-belief test for great apes. In a between-subjects design, apes experienced a novel barrier as either translucent or opaque, although both looked identical from afar. While being eye tracked, all apes then watched a video in which an actor saw an object hidden under 1 of 2 identical boxes. The actor then scuttled behind the novel barrier, at which point the object was relocated and then removed. Only apes who experienced the barrier as opaque visually anticipated that the actor would mistakenly search for the object in its previous location. Great apes, therefore, appeared to attribute differential visual access based specifically on their own past perceptual experience to anticipate an agent’s actions in a false-belief test.

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Are there signature limits in early theory of mind?

Cited by 50 publications

References 41 publications

The Lens Shapes the View: on Task Dependency in ToM Research

The Lens Shapes the View: on Task Dependency in ToM Research

2.5-year-olds succeed in identity and location elicited-response false-belief tasks with adequate response practice

Great apes use self-experience to anticipate an agent’s action in a false-belief test

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