Reframing social cognition: Relational versus representational mentalizing.

Abstract

The most dominant theory of human social cognition, the theory of mind hypothesis, emphasizes our ability to infer the mental states of others. After having represented the mental states of another person, however, we can also have an idea of how well our thinking aligns with theirs, and our sensitivity to this alignment may guide the flow of our social interactions. Here, we focus on the distinction between “mindreading” (inferring another’s mental representation) and detecting the extent to which a represented mental state of another person is matching or mismatching with our own (mental conflict monitoring). We propose a reframing for mentalizing data of the past 40 years in terms of mental conflict monitoring rather than mental representation. Via a systematic review of 51 false belief neuroimaging studies, we argue that key brain regions implicated in false belief designs (namely, temporoparietal junction areas) may methodologically be tied to mental conflict rather than to mental representation. Patterns of false belief data suggests that autism may be tied to a subtle issue with monitoring mental conflict combined with intact mental representation, rather than to lacking mental representation abilities or “mindblindness” altogether. The consequences of this view for the larger social–cognitive domain are explored, including for perspective taking, moral judgments, and understanding irony and humor. This provides a potential shift in perspective for psychological science, its neuroscientific bases, and related disciplines: Throughout life, an adequate sensitivity to how others think differently (relational mentalizing) may be more fundamental to navigating the social world than inferring which thoughts others have (representational mentalizing).

Human but not robotic gaze facilitates action prediction

“…This position is strongly based on false belief tasks. Crucially, typical false belief tasks may not reflect our ability to reason upon others mental states but rather the ability to compare different mental representations (48). Although the "nonmerging" criterion has been defined as crucial for supporting the claim of mentalising abilities, we believe this criterion to be more important in text-based and vignette-based tasks where mismatching mental representations between different agents must be detected.…”

Prediction Impairment May Explain Communication Difficulties in Autism

“…We see this partly as a consequence of most studies using offline tasks, which only measure the ultimate response in a task but do not provide measures of the processes leading to this particular response (e.g., different cognitive processes can lead to the same outcome regarding ToM judgements or EF responses). Moreover, heterogeneity in outcomes (i.e., not every autistic individual shows inaccurate ToM judgements or EF responses; e.g., Baez et al, 2020 ; Deschrijver and Palmer, 2020 ) cannot be well-understood if the processes leading to these responses are not studied too. Thus, rethinking the theoretical foundations beyond ToM and EF is needed to accommodate structural language problems in autism.…”

Knowledge prior to belief: Is extended better than enacted?

“…But is this necessarily the case? We recently pointed out in our newly developed relational mentalizing framework (Deschrijver & Palmer, 2020) that although passing a false-belief task is sufficient to conclude a belief representation ability to be present, failing one does not yield evidence for it to be absent. False-belief tasks are social conflict designs: The other typically holds a mental state that is manipulated to be irreconcilable with their own (e.g., they may think that the ball is in the basket, whereas you think it is in the box).…”

“…However, for example in a young child, if the mechanism fails to inhibit their own misaligned mental state despite being able to represent both states, it may manifest as an inability to verbalize or show sensitivity to the other's false belief. Even neurotypical adults, who undoubtedly represent others' mental states, can make errors in a false-belief task if they fail to suppress their own mental representation, suggesting that the mechanism indeed exists (Keysar, Lin, & Barr, 2003; for other evidence, see Deschrijver & Palmer, 2020). Ineffective mental conflict monitoring may also be reflected in more interference by the other's belief if the task requires you to inhibit the representation of the other's mental state to focus on your own, as reported in some adults on the spectrum (Deschrijver, Bardi, Wiersema, & Brass, 2016).…”