This study investigated the benefits of self-distancing (i.e., taking an outsider's view of one's own situation) on young children's perseverance. Four- and 6-year-old children (N = 180) were asked ...to complete a repetitive task for 10 min while having the option to take breaks by playing an extremely attractive video game. Six-year-olds persevered longer than 4-year-olds. Nonetheless, across both ages, children who impersonated an exemplar other—in this case a character, such as Batman—spent the most time working, followed by children who took a third-person perspective on the self, or finally, a first-person perspective. Alternative explanations, implications, and future research directions are discussed.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have demonstrated a critical role for a cortical region in the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) in “theory of mind” (ToM), or mental state ...reasoning. In other research, the RTPJ has been implicated in the deployment of attention to an unexpected stimulus. One hypothesis (“attention hypothesis”) is that patterns of RTPJ activation in ToM tasks can be fully explained by appeal to attention: stimuli that apparently manipulate aspects of ToM are in fact manipulating aspects of attention. On an alternative hypothesis (“ToM hypothesis”), functional regions identified by ToM tasks are selective for ToM, and not just for any unexpected stimulus. Here, we used fMRI to test these competing hypotheses: are brain regions implicated in ToM, including the RTPJ, LTPJ, and precuneus, recruited specifically for mental states, or for any unexpected stimulus? We first identified brain regions implicated in ToM, using a standard paradigm: participants read stories about false beliefs and false physical representations (e.g., outdated photographs). Participants also read a new set of stories describing mental or physical states, which were unexpected or expected. Regions of interest analyses revealed a higher response in the RTPJ, LTPJ, and precuneus, for mental versus physical stories, but no difference for unexpected and expected stories. Whole-brain random effects analyses also revealed higher activation in these regions for mental versus physical stories. This pattern provides evidence for the ToM hypothesis: the response in these functional regions is selective for mental state content, whether that content is unexpected or expected.
In this article, I reflect on theory of mind as a field, including how it arose and how it developed. My research has been intertwined with this process; beginning right out of graduate school, my ...career developed along with the field, and I contributed to the field and its development at various points. So this essay also traces my path as I strived, and still strive, to understand how theory of mind begins and unfolds in human development, what forces shape that development, and what accounts best explain the timetables and progressions of theory‐of‐mind understandings in humans. I end with my sense of where theory‐of‐mind research is likely to head in the near future.
Research on third-party moral judgments highlights two mechanisms as central to moral judgments of accidental harms: the inference of intent and the perception of harm. However, little is known about ...how these mechanisms are recruited when people evaluate themselves for harm that they have accidentally caused. Here we explore how a person's perspective — as either actor or observer — influences their moral judgments of accidental harm. We use fMRI to investigate how brain regions involved in the inference of intent and the perception of harm differentially respond when participants either cause (first-person) or observe (third-person) accidental harm. First, we find that people judge their own accidental harms more harshly than they judge others' accidents, and hold themselves more responsible for the unintended harmful outcomes of their choices. Second, we find that regions responding to the first-hand experience of pain are also more sensitive to first-person harms relative to third-person harms, and brain-behavior relationships in a subset of these regions suggest that the tendency to judge oneself more harshly may be supported by a greater sensitivity to the victim's experience of harm. Third, though we find that first-person harms recruit regions for mental state inference to a lesser extent than third-person harms, this difference does not appear to account for the behavioral differences in moral judgment between first-person and third-person harms. The results of this experiment suggest that accidental harms are an important context for broadening our understanding of the relationship between agency, empathy, and moral judgments about the self.
•People judge own accidental harms more wrong than harms caused by others.•People hold themselves more responsible for accidental harms than they hold others.•People recruit ‘empathy for pain’ regions more when causing harm, versus observing.•People recruit ‘theory of mind’ regions less when causing harm, versus observing.
Identifying someone else's noncooperative intentions can prevent exploitation in social interactions. Hence, the inference of another person's mental state might be most pronounced in order to ...improve social decision‐making. Here, we tested the hypothesis that brain regions associated with Theory of Mind (ToM), particularly the right temporo–parietal junction (rTPJ), show higher neural responses when interacting with a selfish person and that the rTPJ‐activity as well as cooperative tendencies will change over time. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a modified prisoner's dilemma game in which 20 participants interacted with three fictive playing partners who behaved according to stable strategies either competitively, cooperatively or randomly during seven interaction blocks. The rTPJ and the posterior–medial prefrontal cortex showed higher activity during the interaction with a competitive compared with a cooperative playing partner. Only the rTPJ showed a high response during an early interaction phase, which preceded participants increase in defective decisions. Enhanced functional connectivity between the rTPJ and the left hippocampus suggests that social cognition and learning processes co‐occur when behavioral adaptation seems beneficial.
Two social learning strategies that develop rapidly during the preschool period are selective trust and overimitation. To our knowledge, no study has directly compared performance on these two ...abilities. In line with previous research, we hypothesized that these abilities would be associated, but that this association would decrease with age; that selective trust would be related to theory of mind; and that overimitation would be related to social affiliation. We first administered a selective trust task and an overimitation task with puppets via video-chat to a sample of 3.5- and 5-year-old children (n = 80). Results did not support our hypotheses. As the overimitation rate was low, we conducted a second experiment using the same procedures, but with human agents (n = 72). Results showed an association between selective trust and theory of mind, and a significant increase of overimitation with the human demonstrator, suggesting that overimitation might be related to social affiliation.
•Preschoolers’ performance on selective trust and overimitation tasks was unrelated.•Selective trust was associated with theory of mind skills with human informants.•There was no link between overimitation and parent-reported social affiliation.•Children overimitated more a human than a puppet model
The study aimed to examine two constructs: general mentalizing processes and the specific component of affective mentalizing regarding self and others alongside the construct of affect regulation ...patterns in female adolescent and young adult inpatients with anorexia nervosa (AN; n = 41), depression (n = 20) and controls (n = 53). We further examined the predictive ability of affect regulation to eating-disorder (ED) symptoms beyond that of the mentalizing variables, and their potential role in mediating between mentalizing, depression and ED symptoms. We used tools assessing reflective functioning (RF), complex emotion recognition and theory of mind (ToM), alexithymia, affect regulation, depression, and ED symptoms. The AN and depression groups exhibited lower general mentalizing and higher alexithymia, emotional reactivity, and emotional cutoff patterns than controls, but showed no greater disturbance in ToM. The two clinical groups did not differ on any of these variables. Elevated mentalizing and adequate affect regulation patterns separately predicted lower severity of ED symptoms. Nonetheless, affect regulation did not add to the predictive value of mentalizing variables. Specifically, elevated alexithymia, and depressive symptomatology, but not RF, predicted greater ED symptomatology. Moreover, alexithymia directly accounted for elevated ED symptoms and also indirectly connected with ED symptoms via emotional hyperactivation and elevated depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that deficiencies in mentalization and affect regulation are not unique to AN, but may rather associated with psychopathology in general. Nonetheless, alexithymia and depression may increase ED-related symptomatology. Affect regulation deficiencies are mainly related with depressive symptoms and emotional hyperactivation is indirectly related with AN via the depressive symptoms.
Theory of mind (ToM) has been shown to be impaired in Clinical High Risk (CHR) for psychosis populations and is linked to functional outcomes and symptom severity. Implicit versus explicit ToM has ...seldom been differentiated in this group, and underlying neural networks have also gone unexplored.
24 CHR and 26 healthy volunteers (HV) completed a behavioral ToM measure called the Short Story Task (SST), as well as a resting state functional MRI scan. SST performance was correlated to attenuated psychosis symptoms. Interactions between group and ToM variables (implicit, explicit, and comprehension) on global efficiency in the Mentalizing (MENT) and Mirror Neuron System (MNS) were also examined.
CHR individuals made significantly fewer spontaneous mental state inferences. There were trend-level associations between ToM variables and symptoms, such that greater ToM performance predicted less severe symptoms. There was an interaction of group by spontaneous mental state inference within MENT bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), such that CHR individuals that made spontaneous mental state inferences showed greater global efficiency within the MENT network's bilateral dmPFC.
Findings suggest implicit ToM deficits are observable prior to psychotic disorder onset, and that these deficits implicate MENT network dmPFC efficiency. Explicit ToM performance was unaltered in the CHR group, and there were no interactions observed within MNS, suggesting specificity of implicit ToM associations with MENT network dmPFC global efficiency. Results identify potential treatment targets for the neural underpinnings of ToM, thus informing prevention and intervention efforts.
•Review of recent attempts to combine the theory theory of social cognition with direct perception.•The role of tacit theoretical (extra-perceptual) inferences.•Two alternative models – predictive ...coding and enactive models.•Contrast between hybrid and pluralistic models of social cognition.
I evaluate several attempts to integrate standard theories of social cognition, either theory theory or simulation theory, with aspects of interaction theory, and especially with the concept of direct social perception. I refer to these as new hybrid theories of social cognition. One of the new hybrids accomplishes the integration only by weakening the concept of mindreading or by understanding mindreading as targeting the shared situation rather than the other’s mental states. Hybrids that attempt to accommodate the idea of direct perception of mental states grant a phenomenological directness only by maintaining tacit (theory-based) inferences on the subpersonal level. If such inferential processes are thought to be extra-perceptual, then perception is neither sufficient nor direct for an understanding of intentions and emotions. Moreover, insistence on top-down inferential processes trades off against the possibility of plasticity in the perceptual system itself. I suggest that a better model than a hybrid theory would be a pluralist one. A pluralist approach to social cognition would treat theoretical inference, simulation, direct perception, interactive skills, etc. as different strategies. The real challenge is to work out a pluralist account of subpersonal processes.
•Cross-classification is the ability to categorize multifaceted-entities in many ways.•Age and theory of mind predicts children’s cross-classification over and above rule switching.•Advanced level ...theory of mind is a particularly strong predictor.•The results increase understanding of cross-classification and cognitive development.
Cross-classification, the ability to categorize multifaceted entities in many ways, is a remarkable cognitive milestone for children. Past work has focused primarily on documenting the timeline for when children reach cross-classification competence. However, it is not well understood what cognitive factors underpin children’s improvements. The current study aimed to examine the contributions of age, theory of mind, and rule switching to children’s cross-classification development. We tested 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 75) using a cross-classification task, the Theory of Mind Task Battery, and the Three-Dimensional Change Card Sort test. The results revealed that age and theory of mind predict children’s cross-classification over and above the effects of rule switching. The results also revealed that advanced-level theory of mind reasoning is a particularly strong predictor of cross-classification development. These findings increase understanding of cross-classification within children’s broader cognitive development.
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