Discontinuity from implicit to explicit theory of mind from infancy to preschool age

Poulin‐Dubois, Diane; Goldman, Elizabeth J.; Meltzer, Alexandra; Psaradellis, Elaine

doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101273

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Thus, whether implicit measures reveal robust evidence for ToM in infancy and automatic and implicit forms of ToM throughout the lifespan remains unclear. Additionally, it remains unclear how early implicit and later explicit ToM performance may be related developmentally, with some studies speaking for continuity ( Sodian et al, 2016 , 2020 ) why others fail to replicate longitudinal continuity patterns ( Poulin-Dubois et al, 2023 ; for recent debate see and Sodian, 2023 and Poulin-Dubois et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How robust are egocentric and altercentric interference effects in social cognition? a test with explicit and implicit versions of a continuous false belief task

et al. 2023

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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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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How robust are egocentric and altercentric interference effects in social cognition? a test with explicit and implicit versions of a continuous false belief task

et al. 2023

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“…Importantly, the tasks we used to measure ToM abilities were not designed to capture individual differences: the aggregate score of few dichotomous items is of limited use when it comes to quantifying genuine differences between individuals. However, since these tasks are the gold standard in the socialcognitive literature (Białecka-Pikul et al, 2021;Byom & Mutlu, 2013;Poulin-Dubois et al, 2023;Rakoczy, 2022;Wellman, 2018), and measures with satisfying psychometric properties are, to the best of our knowledge, still scarce (e.g., Beaudoin et al, 2020;Mayes et al, 1996), we nonetheless relied on them in this study. Thus, lower correlations between ToM abilities and gaze following may reflect poor measurement characteristics on the side of ToM tasks rather than a genuine absence of association.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variation in gaze understanding across the life span: A process-level perspective

Prein,

Maurits,

Werwach

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Following eye gaze is fundamental for many social-cognitive abilities, for example, when judging what another agent can or cannot know. While the emergence of gaze-following has been thoroughly studied on a group level, we know little about (a) the developmental trajectory beyond infancy and (b) the sources of individual differences. In Study 1, we examined gaze understanding across the lifespan (N = 471 3- to 80-years-olds; children from a mid-sized German city; international remotely tested adults). We found a steep learning curve during preschool years, in which children became more precise in locating the attentional focus of an agent. Precision levels then stayed comparably stable throughout adulthood with a minor decline toward old age. In Study 2, we formalized the process of gaze understanding in a computational cognitive model that allowed us to conceptualize individual differences in a psychologically meaningful way (N = 60 3- to 5-year-olds, 50 adults). According to our model, participants estimate pupil angles with varying levels of precision based on observing the pupil location within the agent’s eyes. In Study 3, we tested two implications of our gaze model, namely that gaze understanding could be related to vector estimation in non-social settings and perspective-taking abilities (N = 102 4- to 5-year-olds). We found that gaze understanding is associated with both of these abilities but less so with other Theory of Mind tasks. This work illustrates how the combination of reliable measurement instruments and formal theoretical models allows us to explore the in(ter)dependence of core social-cognitive processes in greater detail.

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“…Do infants already have a ToM, and do they reason about others’ mental states as adults and older children do? Recent studies cast doubt on this idea by showing that success in non-verbal ToM tasks is fragile (e.g., (5, 6), unrelated to later-developing verbal ToM (7, 8), and dissociated from classic ToM regions in the brain (9). This suggests that infants’ correct action prediction in non-verbal ToM tasks relies on a different system than mature verbal ToM, raising the question of which processes underlie these early capacities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A dorsal versus ventral network for understanding others in the developing brain

Schüler,

Berger,

Wiesmann

2024

Preprint

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Young children strongly depend on others, and learning to understand their mental states (referred to as Theory of Mind, ToM) is a key challenge of early cognitive development. Traditionally, ToM is thought to emerge around the age of 4 years. Yet, in non-verbal tasks, preverbal infants already seem to consider others' mental states when predicting their actions. These early non-verbal capacities, however, seem fragile and distinct from later-developing verbal ToM. So far, little is known about the nature of these early capacities and the neural networks supporting them. To identify these networks, we investigated the maturation of nerve fiber connections associated with children's correct non-verbal action prediction and compared them with connections supporting verbal ToM reasoning in 3- to 4-year-old children, that is, before and after their breakthrough in verbal ToM. This revealed a ventral network for non-verbal action prediction versus a dorsal network for verbal ToM. Non-verbal capacities were associated with maturational indices in ventral fiber tracts connecting regions of the salience network, involved in bottom-up social attention processes. In contrast, verbal ToM performance correlated with maturational indices of the arcuate fascicle and cingulum, which dorsally connect regions of the default network, involved in higher-order social cognitive processes including ToM in adults. As non-verbal tasks were linked to connections of the salience network, young children may make use of salient perceptual social cues to predict others' actions, questioning theories of mature ToM before 4 years.

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Discontinuity from implicit to explicit theory of mind from infancy to preschool age

Cited by 11 publications

References 57 publications

How robust are egocentric and altercentric interference effects in social cognition? a test with explicit and implicit versions of a continuous false belief task

How robust are egocentric and altercentric interference effects in social cognition? a test with explicit and implicit versions of a continuous false belief task

Variation in gaze understanding across the life span: A process-level perspective

A dorsal versus ventral network for understanding others in the developing brain

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