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The litmus test for the development of a metarepresentational Theory of Mind is the false belief (FB) task in which children have to represent how another agent misrepresents the world. Children typically start mastering this task around age four. Recently, however, a puzzling finding has emerged: Once children master the FB task, they begin to fail true belief (TB) control tasks. Pragmatic accounts assume that the TB task is pragmatically confusing because it poses a trivial academic test question about a rational agent's perspective; and we do not normally engage in such discourse about subjective mental perspectives unless there is at least the possibility of error or deviance. The lack of such an obvious possibility in the TB task implicates that there might be some hidden perspective difference and thus makes the task confusing. In the present study, we test the pragmatic account by administering to 3- to 6-year-olds (N = 88) TB and FB tasks and structurally analogous true and false sign (TS/FS) tasks. The belief and sign tasks are matched in terms of representational and metarepresentational complexity; the crucial difference is that TS tasks do not implicate an alternative non-mental perspective and should thus be less pragmatically confusing than TB tasks. The results show parallel and correlated development in FB and FS tasks, replicate the puzzling performance pattern in TB tasks, but show no trace of this in TS tasks. Taken together, these results speak in favor of the pragmatic performance account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The dual-strategy model of reasoning proposes that people tend to use one of two reasoning strategies: either a statistical or a counterexample strategy, with the latter being more sensitive to potential counterexamples to a given conclusion. Previous studies have examined the effects of reasoning strategy in a variety of contexts. In the present study, we looked at the effects of gist repetition and disconfirmation on belief in an unknown claim. This is particularly interesting since there is no single normative analysis of this situation. We examine the hypotheses that (a) increasing gist repetition will result in higher levels of belief with both counterexample and statistical reasoners, and (b) that counterexample reasoners will have lower belief levels following a single disconfirming instance than will statistical reasoners. In a large-scale online study, over 2,000 adult participants received a False Claim procedure along with a Strategy Diagnostic. Results are consistent with the hypotheses. This provides strong evidence that the dual-strategy model captures a clear difference in information processing that is not captured by any normative/non-normative distinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, online testing has become an increasingly important instrument in developmental research, in particular since the COVID-19 pandemic made in-lab testing impossible. However, online testing comes with two substantial challenges. First, it is unclear how valid results of online studies really are. Second, implementing online studies can be costly and/or require profound coding skills. This article addresses the validity of an online testing approach that is low-cost and easy to implement: The experimenter shares test materials such as videos or presentations via video chat and interactively moderates the test session. To validate this approach, we compared children’s performance on a well-established task, the change-of-location false belief task, in an in-lab and online test setting. In two studies, 3- and 4-year-old received online implementations of the false belief version (Study 1) and the false and true belief version of the task (Study 2). Children’s performance in these online studies was compared to data of matching tasks collected in the context of in-lab studies. Results revealed that the typical developmental pattern of performance in these tasks found in in-lab studies could be replicated with the novel online test procedure. These results suggest that the proposed method, which is both low-cost and easy to implement, provides a valid alternative to classical in-person test settings.

Recently, online testing has become an increasingly important instrument in developmental research, in particular since the COVID-19 pandemic made in-lab testing impossible. However, online testing comes with two substantial challenges. First, it is unclear how valid results of online studies really are. Second, implementing online studies can be costly and/or require profound coding skills. This article addresses the validity of an online testing approach that is low-cost and easy to implement: The experimenter shares test materials such as videos or presentations via video chat and interactively moderates the test session. To validate this approach, we compared children's performance on a well-established task, the change-of-location false belief task, in an in-lab and online test setting. In two studies, 3- and 4-year-old received online implementations of the false belief version (Study 1) and the false and true belief version of the task (Study 2). Children's performance in these online studies was compared to data of matching tasks collected in the context of in-lab studies. Results revealed that the typical developmental pattern of performance in these tasks found in in-lab studies could be replicated with the novel online test procedure. These results suggest that the proposed method, which is both low-cost and easy to implement, provides a valid alternative to classical in-person test settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have documented the involvement of the posterior cerebellar Crus (I & II) in social mentalizing, when sequences play a critical role. We investigated for the first time implicit learning of belief sequences. We created a novel task in which true and false beliefs of other persons were alternated in an adapted serial reaction time (SRT) paradigm (Belief SRT task). Participants observed two protagonists whose beliefs concerning reality were manipulated, depending on their orientation toward the scene (true belief: directly observing the situation) or away from it (false belief: knowing only the prior situation). Unbeknownst to the participants, a fixed sequence related to the two protagonists' belief orientations was repeated throughout the task (Training phase); and to test the acquisition of this fixed sequence, it was occasionally interrupted by random sequences (Test phase). As a nonsocial control, the two protagonists and their orientations were replaced by two different shapes of different colors respectively (Control SRT task). As predicted, the posterior cerebellar Crus I & II were activated during the Belief SRT task and not in the Control SRT task. The Belief SRT task revealed that Crus I was activated during the initial learning of the fixed sequence (Training phase) and when this learned sequence was interrupted by random sequences (Test phase). Moreover, Crus II was activated during occasional reappearance of the learned sequence in the context of sequence violations (Test phase). Our results demonstrate the contribution of the posterior cerebellar Crus during implicit learning and predicting new belief sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic variability is being discussed as a source of inter‐individual differences in Theory of Mind development. Previous studies documented an association between variations in DRD4 VNTR 48 bp, OXTR rs53576, COMT rs4680, and Theory of Mind task performance. As empirical evidence on these associations is sparse, we conducted a preregistered replication attempt of a study reporting a link between DRD4 VNTR 48 bp and false belief understanding in 50‐month‐old children [Lackner, C., Sabbagh, M. A., Hallinan, E., Liu, X., & Holden, J. J. (2012). Developmental Science, 15(2), 272–280.]. Additionally, we attempted a replication of studies on the role of OXTR rs53576 and COMT rs4680 in Theory of Mind. In both replication attempts, we did not find any evidence for associations between the sampled genetic markers and Theory of Mind ability in a series of analyses. Extending the replication attempt of Lackner et al., we employed longitudinal data from several tasks and measurement points, which allowed us to run follow‐up robustness checks with more reliable scores. These extensive analyses corroborated our null finding. This comprehensive non‐replication is important to balance current research on genetic markers of Theory of Mind. In a combined evaluation of our own and previous studies, we point to substantial methodological issues that research on the genetic basis of Theory of Mind development faces. We conclude that these limitations currently prevent firm conclusions on genetic influences on Theory of Mind development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although some authors claim that deception requires intention, we argue that there can be deception in social robotics, whether or not it is intended. By focusing on the deceived rather than the deceiver, we propose that false beliefs can be created in the absence of intention. Supporting evidence is found in both human and animal examples. Instead of assuming that deception is wrong only when carried out to benefit the deceiver, we propose that deception in social robotics is wrong when it leads to harmful impacts on individuals and society. The appearance and behaviour of a robot can lead to an overestimation of its functionality or to an illusion of sentience or cognition that can promote misplaced trust and inappropriate uses such as care and companionship of the vulnerable. We consider the allocation of responsibility for harmful deception. Finally, we make the suggestion that harmful impacts could be prevented by legislation, and by the development of an assessment framework for sensitive robot applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine whether children's acquisition of perspective-marking language supports development in their ability to reason about mental states, we conducted a longitudinal study testing whether proficiency with complement clauses around age 3 explained variance in false-belief reasoning 6 months later. Forty-five English-speaking 2- and 3-year-olds (23 female, Time 1 age range = 33-41 months) from middle-class families in the North-West of England took part in the study, which addresses a series of uncertainties in previous studies. We avoided the confound of using complement clauses in the false-belief tests, assessed complement-clause proficiency with a new comprehensive test designed to capture gradual development, and controlled for individual differences in executive functioning that could affect both linguistic and sociocognitive performance. Further, we aimed to disentangle the influence of two aspects of complement-clause acquisition: proficiency with the perspective-marking syntactic structure itself and understanding of the specific mental verbs used in this syntactic structure. To investigate direction of causality, we also tested whether early false-belief reasoning predicted later complement-clause proficiency. The results provide strong support for the hypothesis that complement-clause acquisition promotes development in false-belief reasoning. Proficiency with the general structure of complement-clause constructions and understanding of the specific mental verbs "think" and "know" in third-person complements at Time 1 both contributed uniquely to predicting false-belief performance at Time 2. However, false-belief performance at Time 1 also contributed uniquely to predicting complement-clause proficiency at Time 2. Together, these results indicate a bidirectional relationship between linguistic and sociocognitive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ruffman (2014) argues for a minimalist account of infants' performance on theory of mind tasks. This commentary argues that because Ruffman's minimalist account is post hoc, it neither generates testable predictions about how infants will respond in new situations, nor does it offer a coherent explanation for existing false-belief findings. An alternative, mentalist account is presented. This account integrates infancy findings with prior theory of mind literature and generates novel predictions about children's false belief performance. © 2014 Elsevier Inc.

An established body of literature indicates that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty understanding figurative language due to a deficit in theory of mind, or the ability to consider the beliefs of other people. Children with ASD tend to similarly fail traditional theory of mind tasks, which assess their ability to represent false beliefs. Our claim is, however, that these tasks involve cognitive processing demands that might mask false belief understanding because they require elicited responses. We examined whether children with ASD demonstrate false-belief understanding when tested with a spontaneous-response false belief task that measures children’s eye gaze durations. The two child participant groups were composed of 20 males with ASD (aged 3–9 years) and 20 typically developing males (aged 2–5 years) who were individually matched according to verbal mental age. Children with ASD and typically developing children listened to a change-of-location story accompanied by a book with matching and non-matching pictures. The final page showed the character searching for her object in a location that was either consistent or inconsistent with her belief. Both groups of children looked reliably longer at the belief-consistent picture, regardless of whether the character’s belief was true or false, though children with ASD were slower to do so. We suggest that a spontaneous-response assessment technique can potentially reveal figurative language comprehension in children with ASD in future research.

Context: Immunization coverage counts among the priorities of public health services. To identify factors that motivate or fail to motivate patients to update their vaccination status would help to design future strategies and awareness campaigns.Objective: Our aim was to assess the impact of primary care physicians on the immunization status of their adult patients, and to explore possible explanations.Methods: We invited students and collaborators of Geneva University to bring their paper vaccination records to receive an assessment of their immunization status and personalized vaccination recommendations. Participants completed a first questionnaire at the recruitment phase, and a second 2–3 months later. We assessed their immunization status with the viavac algorithms based on the Swiss national immunization plan.Results: Having a primary care physician did not correlate with better immunization status: only 22.5% patients who reported having a physician and 20% who reported having no physician were up-to-date (n = 432; p > 0.5). A linear regression indicates that the frequency of medical consultations did not affect patients' immunization status either. Even the participants who recently showed their vaccination record to their primary care physician did not have a better vaccination status. We explored possible explanatory factors and found evidence for the patients' overconfidence about their own immunization status: 71.2% of the participants who predicted that they were up-to-date were wrong about their actual status, and 2–3 months after having received their immunization assessment, 52.8% of the participants who “remembered” having received the assessment that they were up-to-date were wrong: they had in fact received the opposite information that they were not up-to-date. This substantial proportion of wrong beliefs suggests that adult patients are unworried and overconfident about their own immunization status, which is likely to induce a passive resistance toward vaccination updating.Conclusions: This study indicates that the vaccination coverage and beliefs of adults about their immunization status is suboptimal, and that primary care physicians need further support to improve their health-protection mandate through routine immunization check-ups. We highlight that the current covid vaccination campaigns offer a rare opportunity to update patients' immunization status and urge physicians to do so.

We investigated whether dogs (Canis familiaris) distinguish between human true (TB) and false beliefs (FB). In three experiments with a pre-registered change of location task, dogs (n = 260) could retrieve food from one of two opaque buckets after witnessing a misleading suggestion by a human informant (the 'communicator') who held either a TB or a FB about the location of food. Dogs in both the TB and FB group witnessed the initial hiding of food, its subsequent displacement by a second experimenter, and finally, the misleading suggestion to the empty bucket by the communicator. On average, dogs chose the suggested container significantly more often in the FB group than in the TB group and hence were sensitive to the experimental manipulation. Terriers were the only group of breeds that behaved like human infants and apes tested in previous studies with a similar paradigm, by following the communicator's suggestion more often in the TB than in the FB group. We discuss the results in terms of processing of goals and beliefs. Overall, we provide evidence that pet dogs distinguish between TB and FB scenarios, suggesting that the mechanisms underlying sensitivity to others' beliefs have not evolved uniquely in the primate lineage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the notion of inevitable ignorance that the Italian Constitutional Court has introduced in justifying a restriction of the legal maxim Ignorantia legis non excusat. In particular, we argue that the epistemic flavor of the notion extends to the notion of inevitability beside that of ignorance, and we offer an epistemic analysis of the notion. This analysis is based both on the legal-theoretical framework defined by the justification of the restriction of the maxim, and on a discussion of some paradigmatic Italian cases where the standard of excusability involving inevitable ignorance is applied. The analysis reveals that the notion of inevitable ignorance is closely connected to a number of notions also used in formal epistemology, such as belief, evidence, rationality, and trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in the last 15 years has challenged the idea that false belief attribution develops at 4 years of age. Studies with indirect false belief tasks contend to provide evidence of false belief attribution in the second year of life. We review the literature on indirect false belief tasks carried out in infants using looking and active helping paradigms. Although the results are heterogeneous and not conclusive, such tasks appear to capture a real effect. However, it is misleading to call them "false belief" tasks, as it is possible to pass them without making any false belief attribution. Infants need to keep track of the object's and agent's positions, trajectories, and focus of attention, given an intentional understanding of the agent, to pass these new tasks. We, therefore, argue that the evidence can be better explained in terms of second‐person attributions, which are transparent, extensional, nonpropositional, reciprocally contingent, and implicit. Second‐person attributions can also account for primates' mentalizing abilities, as revealed by similar indirect tasks. This article is categorized under:Cognitive Biology > Cognitive DevelopmentPhilosophy > Foundations of Cognitive ScienceCognitive Biology > Evolutionary Roots of Cognition [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In schizophrenia research, patients who "jump to conclusions" in probabilistic reasoning tasks tend to display impaired decision-making and delusional belief. In five studies, we examined whether jumping to conclusions (JTC) was similarly associated with decision impairments in a nonclinical sample, such as reasoning errors, false belief, overconfidence, and diminished learning. In Studies 1a and 1b, JTC was associated with errors stimulated by automatic reasoning, oddball beliefs such as conspiracy theories, and overconfidence. We traced these deficits to an absence of controlled processing rather than to an undue impact of automatic thinking, while ruling out roles for plausible alternative individual differences. In Studies 2 and 3, JTC was associated with higher confidence despite diminished performance in a novel probabilistic learning task (i.e., diagnosing illnesses), in part because those who exhibited JTC behavior were prone to overly exuberant theorizing, with no or little data, about how to approach the task early on. In Study 4, we adapted intervention materials used in schizophrenia treatment to train participants to avoid JCT. The intervention quelled overconfidence in the probabilistic learning task. In summary, this research suggests that a fruitful crosstalk may exist between research on psychopathology and work on social cognition within the general public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both syntax and Executive Functions (EF) are involved in Theory‐of‐Mind (ToM) but their contributory roles have mainly been studied separately. Moreover, researchers have mostly administered False Belief (FB) tasks while they may not be representative of all ToM abilities. Studies of adults give valuable information regarding whether syntax and EF are useful for ToM reasoning (i.e., Reasoning account), however, only the study of children brings direct evidence in favor of ToM emergence (i.e., Emergence account). Also, because the ToM tasks used often entail verbal and executive demands, the links observed could mostly result from such confounds (i.e., Expression account). We evaluated ToM, syntactic and EF abilities in 126 children (3‐11 y.o.) using a set of ToM tasks with minimal verbal and executive demands. Our goals were to assess (1) the hierarchical contribution of syntax and EF to ToM, (2) whether results previously obtained for FB tasks are representative of ToM in general, (3) whether the ToM‐syntax and ToM‐EF links are constant (i.e., Reasoning account) or decrease during development (i.e., Emergence accounts). Results of stepwise regression analyses showed a predominant role of syntax over EF to predict ToM abilities. The comparison of results for ToM and FB tasks showed that FB is not always representative of ToM. Finally, there was no moderating effect of age on the syntax‐ToM or EF‐ToM relations, thus suggestive of the Reasoning account rather than the Emergence account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three studies test whether people engage in mental state reasoning or theory of mind (ToM) differently across two fundamental social contexts: cooperation and competition. Study 1 examines how children with an emerging understanding of false beliefs deploy ToM across these contexts. We find that young preschool children are better able to plant false beliefs in others' minds in a cooperative versus competitive context; this difference does not emerge for other cognitive capacities tested (e.g., executive functioning, memory). Studies 2a and 2b reveal the same systematic difference in adults' ToM for cooperation and competition, even after accounting for relevant predictors (e.g., preference for a task condition, feelings about deception). Together, these findings provide initial evidence for enhanced ToM for cooperation versus competition in early development and also adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although an explicit Theory of Mind (ToM) has been found to develop around 4 years of age in Western societies, recent work showing that 4- and 5-year-olds fail modified versions of False Belief tasks as well as seemingly easier True Belief tasks calls into question the robustness of preschoolers’ belief understanding. Some have argued these findings illustrate children’s conceptual limitations in their understanding of belief that are masked by standard False Belief tasks. However, others claim these examples of children’s failure can be explained by pragmatics of the testing situation, rather than conceptual limitations. Given the documented relation between ToM and executive function, an unexamined possibility is that children’s failure can be explained by certain executive demands. In the current study, we examined the relation between typically developing 4- (n = 43) and 5-year-olds’ (n = 42) performance on traditional and modified False Belief tasks, True Belief tasks, and one component of executive functioning - working memory. We found that children performed worse on modified False Belief tasks and True Belief tasks compared to standard 2-option False Belief tasks, and that working memory was related to modified 3-option contents False Belief performance. These results suggest that a fully representational ToM, one that is stable in the context of increased conceptual, executive, and pragmatic demands, may develop later than traditional accounts have assumed.

Traditionally, it had been assumed that meta-representational Theory of Mind (ToM) emerges around the age of 4 when children come to master standard false belief (FB) tasks. More recent research with various implicit measures, though, has documented much earlier competence and thus challenged the traditional picture. In interactive FB tasks, for instance, infants have been shown to track an interlocutor's false or true belief when interpreting her ambiguous communicative acts (Southgate et al. 2010 Dev. Sci. 13, 907–912. (doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00946.x)). However, several replication attempts so far have produced mixed findings (e.g. Dörrenberg et al. 2018 Cogn. Dev. 46, 12–30. (doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.01.001); Grosse Wiesmann et al. 2017 Dev. Sci. 20, e12445. (doi:10.1111/desc.12445); Király et al. 2018 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 11 477–11 482. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1803505115)). Therefore, we conducted a systematic replication study, across two laboratories, of an influential interactive FB task (the so-called ‘Sefo’ tasks by Southgate et al. 2010 Dev. Sci. 13, 907–912. (doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00946.x)). First, we implemented close direct replications with the original age group (17-month-olds) and compared their performance to those of 3-year-olds. Second, we designed conceptual replications with modifications and improvements regarding pragmatic ambiguities for 2-year-olds. Third, we validated the task with explicit verbal test versions in older children and adults. Results revealed the following: the original results could not be replicated, and there was no evidence for FB understanding measured by the Sefo task in any age group except for adults. Comparisons to explicit FB tasks suggest that the Sefo task may not be a sensitive measure of FB understanding in children and even underestimate their ToM abilities. The findings add to the growing replication crisis in implicit ToM research and highlight the challenge of developing sensitive, reliable and valid measures of early implicit social cognition.

It has been argued that infants possess a rich, sophisticated theory of mind (ToM) that is only revealed with tasks based on spontaneous responses. A mature (ToM) implies the understanding that mental states are person specific. Previous studies on infants’ understanding of motivational mental states, such as goals and preferences have revealed that, by 9 months of age, infants do not generalize these motivational mental states across agents. However, it remains to be determined if infants also perceive epistemic states as person specific. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to use a switch agent paradigm with the classic false belief violation-of-expectation task. Results revealed that 16-month-old infants attributed true and false beliefs to a naïve agent – they did not perceive beliefs as person specific. These findings indicate that the mechanisms that underlie infants’ implicit attribution of beliefs differ from those assumed for explicit reasoning about beliefs.

Social cognition might play a critical role in language acquisition and comprehension, as mindreading may be necessary to infer the intended meaning of linguistic expressions uttered by communicative partners. In three electrophysiological experiments, we explored the interplay between belief attribution and language comprehension of 14-month-old infants. First, we replicated our earlier finding: infants produced an N400 effect to correctly labelled objects when the labels did not match a communicative partner’s beliefs about the referents. Second, we observed no N400 when we replaced the object with another category member. Third, when we named the objects incorrectly for infants, but congruently with the partner’s false belief, we observed large N400 responses, suggesting that infants retained their own perspective in addition to that of the partner. We thus interpret the observed social N400 effect as a communicational expectancy indicator because it was contingent not on the attribution of false beliefs but on semantic expectations by both the self and the communicative partner. Additional exploratory analyses revealed an early, frontal, positive-going electrophysiological response in all three experiments, which was contingent on infants’ computing the comprehension of the social partner based on attributed beliefs.

The issue of "error", along with the subject of knowledge, is very important for Plato and in the context of defining knowledge as the right belief in Theaetetus, it seeks to explain the possibility of mistaken belief. He offers suggestions to explain the issue of error beliefs. He offers two proposals, one based on the concepts of knowing and not-knowing, and the other based on the concepts of being and not-being, puts two puzzles to believe in error, and both of these are two puzzles to believe in error. Then, he presents three solutions to false belief. Each of these suggestions is carefully reviewed. But all the ways will remain in vain and the efforts are fruitless. Here, Plato seeks to show that the mere reliance on detail as what true knowledge belongs to it, leads to the impossibility of explaining false belief. In this paper, different aspects of the issue of error belief are analyzed to reach Plato's views in the Theaetetus treatise.

In the handful of existing comparative false belief studies, chimpanzees have consistently failed tests that 5- to 6-year-old children have passed. However, those tests were either explicitly cooperative communicativeor competitive, both of which are problematic for different reasons. We therefore devised a new change-of-contents false belief test for children and chimpanzees that did not include these problematic elements. Nevertheless, chimpanzees showed no evidence of understanding false beliefs (consistent with past research, however, children showed a clear improvement in test performance from 3.5 to 4.5 years of age). Our results suggest that the cooperative-communicative or competitive nature of previous false belief tests was not solely responsible for chimpanzees’ failure. That chimpanzees have now also failed a more socially neutral test supports the conclusion that chimpanzees may simply not recognize false belief states in others. Additionally, our test departs from a near exclusive reliance on the change-of-location paradigm in false belief research. It therefore expands the repertoire of methods available for testing false belief understanding with minimally verbal and nonverbal procedures.

The key purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive overview of the literature on perspective-taking from within mainstream psychology and behavior analysis. The primary focus will be on the behavior-analytic approach to perspective-taking, which is divided into what may be described as (1) traditional behavior analysis; (2) an area within behavior analysis that is concerned specifically with human language and cognition, known as Relational Frame Theory (RFT); and (3) an updated version of RFT that is used to provide the beginnings of a detailed and systematic account of the processes involved in perspective-taking abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although an explicit Theory of Mind (ToM) has been found to develop around 4 years of age in Western societies, recent work showing that 4- and 5-year-olds fail modified versions of False Belief tasks as well as seemingly easier True Belief tasks calls into question the robustness of preschoolers' belief understanding. Some have argued these findings illustrate children's conceptual limitations in their understanding of belief that are masked by standard False Belief tasks. However, others claim these examples of children's failure can be explained by pragmatics of the testing situation, rather than conceptual limitations. Given the documented relation between ToM and executive function, an unexamined possibility is that children's failure can be explained by certain executive demands. In the current study, we examined the relation between typically developing 4- (n = 43) and 5-year-olds' (n = 42) performance on traditional and modified False Belief tasks, True Belief tasks, and one component of executive functioning - working memory. We found that children performed worse on modified False Belief tasks and True Belief tasks compared to standard 2-option False Belief tasks, and that working memory was related to modified 3-option contents False Belief performance. These results suggest that a fully representational ToM, one that is stable in the context of increased conceptual, executive, and pragmatic demands, may develop later than traditional accounts have assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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). Public Significance Statement: This review synthesizes the data on human social cognition and argues for a central role of mental conflict monitoring rather than "mindreading" in social development and interaction. It suggests that people on the autism spectrum may be well able to grasp what others think, in contrast to popular and scientific belief, while they may experience more subtle issues after this with monitoring the extent to which others are thinking differently from themselves. Throughout life, an adequate processing of the extent to which others are on the same page may be more fundamental to navigating the social world than inferring mental states of others. A lay summary can also be found in the Section "Social Conflict Monitoring in Everyday Life". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that infants possess a rich, sophisticated theory of mind (ToM) that is only revealed with tasks based on spontaneous responses. A mature (ToM) implies the understanding that mental states are person specific. Previous studies on infants' understanding of motivational mental states, such as goals and preferences have revealed that, by 9 months of age, infants do not generalize these motivational mental states across agents. However, it remains to be determined if infants also perceive epistemic states as person specific. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to use a switch agent paradigm with the classic false belief violation-of-expectation task. Results revealed that 16-month-old infants attributed true and false beliefs to a naïve agent – they did not perceive beliefs as person specific. These findings indicate that the mechanisms that underlie infants' implicit attribution of beliefs differ from those assumed for explicit reasoning about beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of a mind‐reading ability, known as theory‐of‐mind (ToM), has been recognized as following a universal process, but the age at which the false‐belief task is passed has been reported to have wide inter‐group variabilities. Japanese children have been reported to acquire a false‐belief understanding at a slightly older age than their western counterparts. The present study investigated the extent to which Japanese‐children's understanding of ToM could be brought forward by using perspective‐shifting training in conversational discourses. Japanese children aged 4.5 years‐old, but not 4.0 years‐old, improved their false‐belief understanding after the training. However, this improvement was limited to their understanding of representation‐change. Although it is hard to isolate the influence of language experiences and socio‐culture aspects, training with perspective‐shifting discourses in interactive contexts was effective in enhancing the development of mind‐reading for 4.5 year old Japanese children. Highlights: This study investigated the benefits of perspective‐shifting training in conversational discourses for Japanese‐children's theory‐of‐mind (ToM) understanding. Japanese children aged 4.5 years‐old, but not 4.0 years‐old, improved their false‐belief understanding after the training. Perspective‐shifting discourse training lowers the age at which Japanese children can understand ToM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable interest in the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) during early childhood, until recently, there has been little consideration about whether and how ToM skills continue to change into adulthood. Furthermore, the false-belief task, which is believed to capture the underlying mechanisms of ToM, is rarely used in studies of ToM with adults; those tasks that do assess false-belief understanding may be confounded by incidental task demands, such as complex narratives and excessive memory requirements, making it difficult to isolate adults' true ToM skills, much less to compare them with the skills of children. Here, we adapted a task developed by Valle, Massaro, Castelli, and Marchetti (2015, https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v11i1.829) to assess false-belief understanding in adults. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the reading condition, participants read a story about the unexpected transfer of a ball between three brothers. In the video condition, participants watched a video version of the same story. Finally, in the training condition, participants were first trained on the names of the characters, before watching the video. Although condition did not affect participants' ability to correctly answer a standard false belief question ("Where does X think Y thinks the ball is?"), participants in the training condition used more mental state language to justify their responses ("Why does X think Y thinks the ball is here?"), and this improved performance was mediated by improved memory for the story details. We conclude that at least some "failures" of ToM use may be due to an inability to understand, recall, or communicate complex information in a ToM task, raising important questions about how best to measure ToM in adults (and children) in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human social interaction crucially relies on the ability to infer what other people think. Referred to as Theory of Mind (ToM), this ability has long been argued to emerge around 4 y of age when children start passing traditional verbal ToM tasks. This developmental dogma has recently been questioned by nonverbal ToM tasks passed by infants younger than 2 y of age. How do young children solve these tests, and what is their relation to the laterdeveloping verbal ToM reasoning? Are there two different systems for nonverbal and verbal ToM, and when is the developmental onset of mature adult ToM? To address these questions, we related markers of cortical brain structure (i.e., cortical thickness and surface area) of 3- and 4-y-old children to their performance in novel nonverbal and traditional verbal TM tasks. We showed that verbal ToM reasoning was supported by cortical surface area and thickness of the precuneus and temporoparietal junction, classically involved in ToM in adults. Nonverbal ToM reasoning, in contrast, was supported by the cortical structure of a distinct and independent neural network including the supramarginal gyrus also involved in emotional and visual perspective taking, action observation, and social attention or encoding biases. This neural dissociation suggests two systems for reasoning about others' minds--mature verbal ToM that emerges around 4 y of age, whereas nonverbal ToM tasks rely on different earlier-developing possibly social-cognitive processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, there has been a global rise in fear and hostility towards asylum seekers. Xenophobia – or 'fear of the stranger' – has become a pressing issue in a range of disciplines. Several causal models have been proposed to explain this fear and the hostility it produces. However, disciplinary boundaries have limited productive dialogue between these approaches. This article draws connections between four of the main theories that have been advanced in the existing literature: (1) false belief accounts, (2) xenophobia as new racism, (3) sociobiological explanations and (4) xenophobia as an effect of capitalist globalisation. While this article cannot provide an exhaustive review of theories of xenophobia, it aims to present a useful comparative introduction to current research into the social aspects of xenophobia, particularly as these theories have been applied to asylum seekers. In bringing together divergent models, it also invites interdisciplinary engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mentalistic view of early theory of mind posits that infants possess a robust and sophisticated understanding of false belief that is masked by the demands of traditional explicit tasks. Much of the evidence supporting this mentalistic view comes from infants' looking time at events that violate their expectations about the beliefs of a human agent. We conducted a replication of the violation‐of‐expectation procedure, except that the human agent was replaced by an inanimate agent. Infants watched a toy crane repeatedly move toward a box containing an object. In the absence of the crane, the object changed location. When the crane returned, 16‐month‐old infants looked longer when it turned toward the object's new location, consistent with the attribution of a false belief to the crane. These results suggest that infants spontaneously attribute false beliefs to inanimate agents. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/qqEPPhd9FDo [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Effortful control was positively associated with preschool children's instrumental lie-telling behavior. • False belief had no significant relationship with instrumental lie-telling behavior. • Sympathy was negatively associated with lie-telling behavior for older children but had no effect among younger children. • None of the study variables predicted instrumental lie maintenance. This study aimed to examine the predictors of instrumental lies in preschool children, specifically focusing on false belief, effortful control, and sympathy. Instrumental lies are intentional falsehoods used to achieve personal goals such as avoiding punishment and obtaining an undeserved reward. A total of 192 preschool children (age range = 32–73 month-olds), along with their mothers and fathers, participated in the study. The Temptation Resistance Paradigm, an experimental task, was employed to elicit instrumental lies from the children. The children also completed first-order false belief measures, and their parents filled out questionnaires assessing their children's effortful control and sympathy skills. Results revealed a positive association between children's effortful control and their decisions to tell instrumental lies. However, no significant relationship was found between false belief and instrumental lying. Age moderated the link between sympathy and the decision to tell instrumental lies, with sympathy being negatively associated with lie-telling behavior among older children but showing no effect among younger children. The study variables did not predict the maintenance of instrumental lies. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the role of effortful control and sympathy as underlying temperamental and emotional processes influencing children's decisions to engage in instrumental lie-telling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have impaired mentalizing skills. In this study, a group of persons with ASD traits (high-AQ scores) initially received sham tDCS before completing a pre-test in two mentalizing tasks: false belief and self-other judgments. Over the next week, on four consecutive days, they received sessions of anodal electrical stimulation (a-tDCS) over the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ), a region frequently associated with the theory of mind. On the last day, after the stimulation session, they completed a new set of mentalizing tasks. A control group (with low-AQ scores) matched in age, education and intelligence received just sham stimulation and completed the same pre-test and post-test. The results showed that the high-AQ group improved their performance (faster responses), after a-tDCS, in the false belief and in the self-other judgments of mental features, whereas they did not change performance in the false photographs or the self-other judgments of physical features. These selective improvements cannot be attributed to increased familiarity with the tasks, because the performance of the low-AQ control group remained stable about one week later. Therefore, our study provides initial proof that tDCS could be used to improve mentalizing skills in persons with ASD traits.

This study aims to probe how children with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD) attribute false belief to a social robot and predict its action accordingly. Twenty 5- to 7-year-old children with ASD and 20 age- and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children participated in two false belief tasks adapted for robot settings (change-of-location task and the unexpected-contents task). The results showed that most TD children are capable of attributing false belief to the social robot, that is, they could infer higher level mental states in robots, which extends our understanding in TD children’s perception and cognition on social robots. Conversely, children with ASD still show difficulty in interpreting robots’ mental states compared to their TD peers, which would greatly interfere with their interactions and communications with social robots and might impact on efficiency of robot-based intervention and education approaches. This group difference in attributing false belief to social robots could not be explained by the different perception and categorization of the robot. Our study implies that although children with ASD appear to be highly attracted by social robots, they still have difficulty in understanding mental states when socially interacting with robots, which should be taken into consideration when designing the robot-based intervention approach targeting to improve social behaviors of ASD.

Recently, Theory of Mind (ToM) research has been revolutionized by new methods. Eye-tracking studies measuring subjects' looking times or anticipatory looking have suggested that implicit and automatic forms of ToM develop much earlier in ontogeny than traditionally assumed and continue to operate outside of subjects’ awareness throughout the lifespan. However, the reliability of these implicit methods has recently been put into question by an increasing number of non-replications. What remains unclear from these accumulating non-replication findings, though, is whether they present true negatives (there is no robust phenomenon of automatic ToM) or false ones (automatic ToM is real but difficult to tap). In order to address these questions, the current study implemented conceptual replications of influential anticipatory looking ToM tasks with a new variation in the stimuli. In two separate preregistered studies, we used increasingly realistic stimuli and controlled for potential confounds. Even with these more realistic stimuli, previous results could not be replicated. Rather, the anticipatory looking pattern found here remained largely compatible with more parsimonious explanations. In conclusion, the reality and robustness of automatic ToM remains controversial.

The present study has a double purpose. The first is to analyse two of the variables involved in the understanding of the faux pas in autism (Intelligence Quotient – IQ - and False Belief – FB). The second is to examine in detail the difficulties encountered in the Faux Pas test, when autistic individuals were divided into two groups according to their IQ (Group 1 = IQ range 100 – 120, Group 2 = IQ range 70 – 85). Four stories from the Faux Pas test (Baron-Cohen, O'Riordan, Stone, Jones, & Plaisted, 1999) were adapted (vignettes and narration in Spanish), and two groups of autistic children (N = 34) between 7 and 12 years of age (M = 9.6, SD = 1.55) responded through forced-choice answers and verbal explanations. The results demonstrated the predictive capacity of full-scale IQ (r = 0.53; p < 0.001; R 2 = 0.28) and FB (r = 0.51; p < 0.001; R 2 = 0.26) in the performance of the Faux Pas test. Verbal IQ and FB could explain 40% of the variability in the results of the Faux Pas test. Significant differences were found overall in the forced-choice responses, and more specifically in ii) the recognition of the speaker, and vii) the ignorance of the information, as well as in their verbal explanations. Findings are discussed in depth due to their possible impact on the daily lives of autistic individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to probe how children with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD) attribute false belief to a social robot and predict its action accordingly. Twenty 5- to 7-year-old children with ASD and 20 age- and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children participated in two false belief tasks adapted for robot settings (change-of-location task and the unexpected-contents task). The results showed that most TD children are capable of attributing false belief to the social robot, that is, they could infer higher level mental states in robots, which extends our understanding in TD children's perception and cognition on social robots. Conversely, children with ASD still show difficulty in interpreting robots' mental states compared to their TD peers, which would greatly interfere with their interactions and communications with social robots and might impact on efficiency of robot-based intervention and education approaches. This group difference in attributing false belief to social robots could not be explained by the different perception and categorization of the robot. Our study implies that although children with ASD appear to be highly attracted by social robots, they still have difficulty in understanding mental states when socially interacting with robots, which should be taken into consideration when designing the robot-based intervention approach targeting to improve social behaviors of ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This study investigated the effects of lying on belief ratings for autobiographical childhood events. Participants lied by trying to convince the experimenter that likely events had not happened and that unlikely events had happened. Participants consistently lied, consistently told the truth, and alternated lying and truth telling across two sessions. Results showed that consistent false assents increased belief in those false events and that consistent false denials decreased belief in those true events. False denials had a larger influence on belief than did false assents. False assents that were told first were more likely to increase in belief than were false assents told in the second session. False denials decreased belief in the true event regardless of when they were told. These results suggest that lying influences confidence ratings both by increasing belief in a lied‐about event and by decreasing belief in a true event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study establishes a sequence of developing mental state understandings in infants. We used three violation-of-expectation paradigms to assess fifty-seven 16-month-olds' ability to (a) infer an actress's intention from her prior repeated approaches to an object, (b) recognize her emotion by watching her facial-emotional display, and (c) deduce her false belief by noticing her lack of visual access to a change in the experimental setup. Contingencies between passing the three tasks were analyzed. Results showed that the infants made sense of intention first, followed by emotion, and then false belief. This progressive sequence parallels what has been found with preschoolers using verbal theory-of-mind tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory of mind (ToM), the capacity to reason about others' mental states, is central to healthy social development. Neural mechanisms supporting ToM may contribute to individual differences in children's social cognitive behavior. Employing a false belief functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm, we identified patterns of neural activity and connectivity elicited by ToM reasoning in school-age children (N  = 32, ages 9–13). Next, we tested relations between these neural ToM correlates and children's everyday social cognition. Several key nodes of the neural ToM network showed greater activity when reasoning about false beliefs (ToM condition) vs non-mentalistic false content (control condition), including the bilateral temporoparietal junction (RTPJ and LTPJ), precuneus (PC) and right superior temporal sulcus. In addition, children demonstrated task-modulated changes in connectivity among these regions to support ToM relative to the control condition. ToM-related activity in the PC was negatively associated with variation in multiple aspects of children's social cognitive behavior. Together, these findings elucidate how nodes of the ToM network act and interact to support false belief reasoning in school-age children and suggest that neural ToM mechanisms are linked to variation in everyday social cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bilingualism might help children develop Theory of Mind, but the evidence is mixed. To address the disagreement in the literature, a meta-analysis was conducted on studies that compared bilingual and monolingual children on false belief and other Theory of Mind tests. The meta-analysis of 16 studies and 1,283 children revealed a small bilingual advantage (Cohen's d = 0.22, p = 0.050). A secondary analysis was conducted on studies (k = 8) that statistically adjusted the Theory of Mind scores to correct for a bilingual disadvantage in language proficiency. This secondary analysis indicated a medium-size bilingual advantage (Cohen's d = 0.58, p < 0.001). There was no evidence for publication bias in either analysis. Taken together, the results provide support for a beneficial effect of acquiring two languages on mental state reasoning. Explanations for this bilingual advantage, which include bilingual-monolingual differences in executive functioning, metalinguistic awareness, and socio-pragmatic abilities, are discussed.

This study investigated the relationship between children’s abilities to understand causal sequences and another’s false belief. In Experiment 1, we tested 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children (n = 28, 28, 27, and 27, respectively) using false belief and picture sequencing tasks involving mechanical, behavioral, and psychological causality. Understanding causal sequences in mechanical, behavioral, and psychological stories was related to understanding other’s false beliefs. In Experiment 2, children who failed the initial false belief task (n = 50) were reassessed 5 months later. High scorers in the sequencing of the psychological stories in Experiment 1 were more likely to pass the standard false belief task than were the low scorers. Conversely, understanding causal sequences in the mechanical and behavioral stories in Experiment 1 did not predict passing the false belief task in Experiment 2. Thus, children may understand psychological causality before they are able to use it to understand false beliefs.