Culturally embedded schemata for false belief reasoning

Abstract

I argue that both language acquisition and cultural and social factors contribute to the formation of schemata that facilitate false belief reasoning. While the proposal for an active role of language acquisition in this sense has been partially advanced by several voices in the mentalizing debate, I argue that other accounts addressing this issue present some shortcomings. Specifically, I analyze the existing proposals distinguishing between “structure-oriented” views (with the most relevant representative in de Villiers and de Villiers in Complements enable representation of the contents of false beliefs: the evolution of a theory of theory of mind. Language Acquisition, Foster-Cohen, 2009; de Villiers in Int Rev Gen Linguistics 117(11):1858–1878, 2007; de Villiers in Why language matters for theory of mind. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 186–219, 2005), that stress the role of language as a set of rules providing syntactic input and providing a representational format, and “cultural/social-oriented views”, that stress the role of social interaction (among others Nelson in Why language matters for theory of mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005; Hutto in Folk psychological narratives: the sociocultural basis of understanding reasons. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008b). Starting from the analysis of these views, I defend my own account of the role of language acquisition in aiding false belief reasoning. I argue that language acquisition plays a pivotal role in the formation of schemata used by pre-schoolers to pass the false belief task. I propose a specific learning mechanism for exploiting linguistic information that taps into specific cognitive abilities, thus making a very concrete suggestion about the role of linguistic input in specific cultural contexts for the development of false belief skills.

Social inheritance and the social mind: Introduction to the Synthese topical collection The Cultural Evolution of Human Social Cognition

“…Although it does not support any specific predictions about the ways in which specific linguistic forms might support particular ToM abilities, it does provide a general proof of principle that the cultural evolution of language leads to improved perspective taking abilities. Thus, the model developed by Woensdregt et al is consistent with claims made in several papers in this volume (Berio, 2021;Moore, 2021;Rubio-Fernandez, 2021).…”

“…In a similar vein to Moore's paper (and with both Berio and Moore developing ideas proposed by van Cleave and Gauker (2010)), Berio (2021) argues that the interplay of linguistic structure and social interaction was central to the evolution of our mindreading capacities and remains key to their development. As Berio points out, while some think there is an intuitive role for social interaction in generating linguistic structure (as outlined by Moore, 2021), not all theorists hold such an important causal role for social interaction in the evolution and development of the key features of language.…”

The cultural evolution of mind-modelling

“…Further, I do not claim that language is the only way to acquire a human-like ToM. It may be that ToM-like representations could be acquired non-linguistically (Berio 2020). In that case even a developmental necessity claim is not a metaphysical claim about human possibility, so much as a claim about our normal developmental trajectory.…”

Words have a weight: language as a source of inner grounding and flexibility in abstract concepts

“…Rehearsing and imagining conversations with others in addition to self-directed inner speech may help us fine-tune and adjust our concepts (Clark, 2006;Kompa, 2019). In keeping with this, evidence suggests that folk-psychological narratives structure and influence the development of theory of mind (Berio, 2020).…”