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The ability to reason about someone else's mental states, an ability known as theory of mind, is essential to help children navigate social life. However, not all children are socially skilled. Given socialisation is key for healthy development in children, finding what might exacerbate these difficulties is important. Emerging research suggests a potential link between anxiety and theory of mind abilities in children. This meta-analysis aims to characterise that link. Four electronic databases were systematically searched to identify relevant studies. Search terms included variations of terms for theory of mind, anxiety, and children. Studies were screened with inclusion and exclusion criteria for eligibility and identified papers were appraised on quality. The search returned 3674 papers of which 20 were included in the analysis. These included a total of 3110 participants, aged 4–19. Overall, it was found that anxiety had a negative relationship with theory of mind and this appeared to be more pronounced in theory of mind processes related to affective states. There were no differences in the negative relationship between subtypes of anxiety or between studies with autistic and neurotypical children. The findings suggest that anxious children may have difficulties using theory of mind abilities. Heterogeneity was substantial in the data, which limits the confidence in conclusions. Quality appraisal identified that the quality of theory of mind and anxiety measures varied between studies. • Anxiety disrupts both cognitive and affective Theory of Mind processes in children. • There was no significant difference of Theory of Mind performance between anxious neurotypical and anxious autistic children. • No differential effects between anxiety disorders on Theory of Mind performance were found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forty years ago, Gallup proposed that theory of mind presupposes self‐awareness. Following Humphrey, his hypothesis was that individuals can infer the mental states of others thanks to the ability to monitor their own mental states in similar circumstances. Since then, advances in several disciplines, such as comparative and developmental psychology, have provided empirical evidence to test Gallup's hypothesis. Herein, we review and discuss this evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from university education to daily work at school is recognised as a significant challenge for teachers and special education teachers, termed ‘reality shock’. This study investigates the role of mentalising – the capacity to perceive and interpret behaviour based on intentional mental states – and teaching-related self-efficacy as potential intrapsychic mechanisms that mediate the impact of current stress experiences on the development of stress-related symptoms and declines in well-being. Analysing data from 696 novice special education teachers in southern Germany, a structural equation model revealed that mentalising and teaching-related self-efficacy mediate the relationship between stress experiences, the levels of stress-related symptoms, and impaired well-being. Furthermore, the findings suggest that both psychological processes may reflect largely independent coping mechanisms. Practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Societies are becoming more polarised, driven in part by misconceptions about out-groups’ beliefs. To understand these effects, one must examine the cognitive processes underlying how people think about others. Here, we investigate whether people are less prone to theorise about the minds of out-groups, or less able to do so. Participants (Study 1: n = 128; Study 2: n = 128) made inferences about social and political beliefs held by real in-group and out-group members, and could choose to receive further information to improve these inferences. Results show: (1) participants sought equivalent or greater information about out-groups relative to in-groups; but despite this, (2) made significantly less accurate inferences for out-groups; and (3) were significantly less aware of their reduced ability. This shows that poorer mental state inference is not underpinned by a reduced propensity to consider out-group minds, but instead by a worse representation of the minds of out-groups.

Societies are becoming more polarised, driven in part by misconceptions about out-groups' beliefs. To understand these effects, one must examine the cognitive processes underlying how people think about others. Here, we investigate whether people are less prone to theorise about the minds of out-groups, or less able to do so. Participants (Study 1: n = 128; Study 2: n = 128) made inferences about social and political beliefs held by real in-group and out-group members, and could choose to receive further information to improve these inferences. Results show: (1) participants sought equivalent or greater information about out-groups relative to in-groups; but despite this, (2) made significantly less accurate inferences for out-groups; and (3) were significantly less aware of their reduced ability. This shows that poorer mental state inference is not underpinned by a reduced propensity to consider out-group minds, but instead by a worse representation of the minds of out-groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous cars are indispensable when humans go further down the hands-free route. Although existing literature highlights that the acceptance of the autonomous car will increase if it drives in a human-like manner, sparse research offers the naturalistic experience from a passenger's seat perspective to examine the humanness of current autonomous cars. The present study tested whether the AI driver could create a human-like ride experience for passengers based on 69 participants’ feedback in a real-road scenario. We designed a ride experience-based version of the non-verbal Turing test for automated driving. Participants rode in autonomous cars (driven by either human or AI drivers) as a passenger and judged whether the driver was human or AI. The AI driver failed to pass our test because passengers detected the AI driver above chance. In contrast, when the human driver drove the car, the passengers’ judgement was around chance. We further investigated how human passengers ascribe humanness in our test. Based on Lewin's field theory, we advanced a computational model combining signal detection theory with pre-trained language models to predict passengers’ humanness rating behaviour. We employed affective transition between pre-study baseline emotions and corresponding post-stage emotions as the signal strength of our model. Results showed that the passengers’ ascription of humanness would increase with the greater affective transition. Our study suggested an important role of affective transition in passengers’ ascription of humanness, which might become a future direction for autonomous driving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundImpairments in empathy are well established in anorexia nervosa (AN). It is unclear, however, whether these deficits only occur in the acute phases of AN due to neurocognitive impacts of starvation (often referred to as context-dependent, or state-like), or if deficits remain once remission has been achieved (trait-like). This debate is commonly referred to as the ‘state vs trait’ debate.ObjectiveThis systematic review aims to summarise existing literature regarding empathy in AN, and to investigate whether empathy deficits in AN are state- or trait-based.MethodA total of 1014 articles were identified, and seven articles remained after the screening process. These seven articles, comparing empathy across three groups (acute AN, remission of AN, and non-clinical controls), were evaluated and summarised in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Articles were required to have included all three groups and report on either cognitive empathy and/or emotional empathy.ResultsThe majority of studies were of satisfactory quality. The results identified were inconsistent, with few articles lending some support to the ‘state’ hypothesis and others producing nonsignificant results.ConclusionsThere is minimal literature comparing empathy in acute and remission phases of AN. While there were some inconsistencies in included articles, some data indicate that there may be slight improvements to emotional and cognitive empathy following recovery of AN. Further research is needed to better enrich knowledge regarding the role of state vs trait with regard to neurocognitive difficulties experienced by individuals with AN.Systematic review registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=335669, identifier CRD42022335669.

Background: Mentalising and stress regulation pose challenges for adults with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities (MBID), emphasising the importance of an intervention program. The study examined the effectiveness and social validity of the serious game 'You & I' in enhancing mentalising and stress regulation among adults with MBID. Method: A randomised controlled superiority trial with experimental and waitlist‐control groups was conducted with 159 adults with MBID (Mage = 36) at baseline, post‐test, and follow‐up. Analyses investigated the effects on aspects of mentalising, stress regulation, and social validity. Results: The experimental group showed decreased stress from negative interpersonal relations, while the control group experienced increased stress (d = 0.26). There were no significant effects on mentalising, but positive user expectations and experiences were reported. Conclusions: This initial study on 'You & I' provides limited evidence of its effectiveness for people with MBID, warranting further examination of the potential of serious games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Corona Radiata (CR) is a large white matter tract in the brain comprising of the anterior CR (aCR), superior CR (sCR), and posterior CR (pCR), which have associations with cognition, self-regulation, and, in schizophrenia, positive symptom severity. This study tested the hypothesis that the microstructural organisation of the aCR, as measured by Fractional Anisotropy (FA) using Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), would relate to poorer social cognitive outcomes and higher positive symptom severity for people with schizophrenia, when compared to healthy participants. We further hypothesised that increased positive symptoms would relate to poorer social cognitive outcomes. Data were derived from n = 178 healthy participants (41 % females; 36.11 ± 12.36 years) and 58 people with schizophrenia (30 % females; 42.4 ± 11.1 years). The Positive and Negative Symptom Severity Scale measured clinical symptom severity. Social Cognition was measured using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) Total Score, as well as the Positive, Neutral, and Negative stimuli valence. The ENIGMA-DTI protocol tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) was used. There was a significant difference in FA for the CR, in individuals with schizophrenia compared to healthy participants. On stratification, both the aCR and pCR were significantly different between groups, with patients showing reduced white matter tract microstructural organisation. Significant negative correlations were observed between positive symptomatology and reduced microstructural organisation of the aCR. Performance for RMET negative valence items was significantly correlated bilaterally with the aCR, but not the sCR or pCR, and no relationship to positive symptoms was observed. These data highlight specific and significant microstructural white-matter differences for people with schizophrenia, which relates to positive clinical symptomology and poorer performance on social cognition stimuli. While reduced FA is associated with higher positive symptomatology in schizophrenia, this study shows the specific associated with anterior frontal white matter tracts and reduced social cognitive performance. The aCR may have a specific role to play in frontal-disconnection syndromes, psychosis, and social cognitive profile within schizophrenia, though further research requires more sensitive, specific, and detailed consideration of social cognition outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Mentalising can be defined as the social-cognitive ability to understand and infer the mental non-emotional states of oneself and others. Recently, the Four-Item Mentalising Index (FIMI), a self-report scale, was developed to efficiently measure mentalising ability in English-speaking samples. This study presents a German translation of the FIMI—namely, the Four-Item Mentalising Index-German (FIMI-G). To assess the usefulness of the translation, initial evidence for the psychometric properties of the FIMI-G was gathered in a German-speaking sample from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (N = 283). As expected, the corrected item-total correlations, the confirmatory factor analysis, and the inner consistency estimation indicated a homogenous, unidimensional measure which corresponds to the English original. In addition, the FIMI-G scores were related to the validation criteria as expected. Socially desirable responding did not undermine the validity. It is concluded that the German FIMI translation is a useful measure.

Autistic people often have an atypical profile of abilities: while excelling in some structured paradigms, many report difficulties with making real-life decisions. To test whether decision-making in autism is different from in typically developing controls, we reviewed 104 studies that compared decision-making performance between autistic and comparison participants (N = 2712 autistic and N = 3189 comparison participants) between 1998 and 2022. Our searches revealed four main decision-making paradigms that are widely used in the field of decision neuroscience: perceptual discrimination, reward learning, metacognition and value-based decision-making paradigm. Our synthesis highlights that perceptual processing and reward learning were similar between autistic and comparison participants, whereas value-based decision-making and metacognitive accuracy were often different between groups. Furthermore, decision-making differences were most pronounced when the autistic participant was explicitly probed to report on an internal belief, while implicit markers of the same decision (e.g. error-related response times) were usually not different. Our findings provide evidence in favour of a metacognitive explanation of decision-making atypicalities in autism. Lay summary: Many autistic people report difficulties with real-life decision-making. However, when doing decision-making tests in laboratory experiments, autistic people often perform as well or better than non-autistic people. We review previously published studies on autistic people's decision-making, across different types of tests, to understand what type of decision-making is more challenging. To do this, we searched four databases of research papers. We found 104 studies that tested, in total, 2712 autistic and 3189 comparison participants on different decision-making tasks. We found that there were four categories of decision-making tests that were used in these experiments: perceptual (e.g. deciding which image has the most dots); reward learning (e.g. learning which deck of cards gives the best reward); metacognition (e.g. knowing how well you perform or what you want); and value-based (e.g. making a decision based on a choice between two outcomes that differ in value to you). Overall, these studies suggest that autistic and comparison participants tend to perform similarly well at perceptual and reward-learning decisions. However, autistic participants tended to decide differently from comparison participants on metacognition and value-based paradigms. This suggests that autistic people might differ from typically developing controls in how they evaluate their own performance and in how they make decisions based on weighing up the subjective value of two different options. We suggest these reflect more general differences in metacognition, thinking about thinking, in autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of human–robot collaboration relies on people's ability to understand and predict robots' actions. The machine-like appearance of robots, as well as contextual information, may influence people's ability to anticipate the behaviour of robots. We conducted six separate experiments to investigate how spatial cues and task instructions modulate people's ability to understand what a robot is doing. Participants observed goal-directed and non-goal directed gaze shifts made by human and robot agents, as well as directional cues displayed by a triangle. We report that biasing an observer's attention, by showing just one object an agent can interact with, can improve people's ability to understand what humanoid robots will do. Crucially, this cue had no impact on people's ability to predict the upcoming behaviour of the triangle. Moreover, task instructions that focus on the visual and motor consequences of the observed gaze were found to influence mentalising abilities. We suggest that the human-like shape of an agent and its physical capabilities facilitate the prediction of an upcoming action. The reported findings expand current models of gaze perception and may have important implications for human–human and human–robot collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major depression is one of the most common mental disorders, affecting millions of people around the globe. In recent years, researchers increasingly investigated social cognition in depression and discovered pronounced alterations. A special focus has been put on mentalising or Theory of Mind, the ability to recognize and understand another person's thoughts and feelings. While there is behavioral evidence for deficits in this ability in patients with depression as well as specialized therapeutic interventions, the neuroscientific substrates are only beginning to be understood. In this mini-review, we take a social neuroscience perspective to analyse the importance of altered mentalising in depression and whether it can help to understand the origins and perpetuation of the disorder. We will put a special focus on treatment options and corresponding neural changes to identify relevant paths for future (neuroscientific) research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mentalising ability, indexed as the ability to understand others' beliefs, feelings, intentions, thoughts and traits, is a pivotal and fundamental component of human social cognition. However, considering the multifaceted nature of mentalising ability, little research has focused on characterising individual differences in different mentalising components. And even less research has been devoted to investigating how the variance in the structural and functional patterns of the amygdala and hippocampus, two vital subcortical regions of the "social brain", are related to inter‐individual variability in mentalising ability. Here, as a first step toward filling these gaps, we exploited inter‐subject representational similarity analysis (IS‐RSA) to assess relationships between amygdala and hippocampal morphometry (surface‐based multivariate morphometry statistics, MMS), connectivity (resting‐state functional connectivity, rs‐FC) and mentalising ability (interactive mentalisation questionnaire [IMQ] scores) across the participants (N=24). In IS‐RSA, we proposed a novel pipeline, that is, computing patching and pooling operations‐based surface distance (CPP‐SD), to obtain a decent representation for high‐dimensional MMS data. On this basis, we found significant correlations (i.e., second‐order isomorphisms) between these three distinct modalities, indicating that a trinity existed in idiosyncratic patterns of brain morphometry, connectivity and mentalising ability. Notably, a region‐related mentalising specificity emerged from these associations: self‐self and self‐other mentalisation are more related to the hippocampus, while other‐self mentalisation shows a closer link with the amygdala. Furthermore, by utilising the dyadic regression analysis, we observed significant interactions such that subject pairs with similar morphometry had even greater mentalising similarity if they were also similar in rs‐FC. Altogether, we demonstrated the feasibility and illustrated the promise of using IS‐RSA to study individual differences, deepening our understanding of how individual brains give rise to their mentalising abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major depression is one of the most common mental disorders, affecting millions of people around the globe. In recent years, researchers increasingly investigated social cognition in depression and discovered pronounced alterations. A special focus has been put on mentalising or Theory of Mind, the ability to recognize and understand another person’s thoughts and feelings. While there is behavioral evidence for deficits in this ability in patients with depression as well as specialized therapeutic interventions, the neuroscientific substrates are only beginning to be understood. In this mini-review, we take a social neuroscience perspective to analyse the importance of altered mentalising in depression and whether it can help to understand the origins and perpetuation of the disorder. We will put a special focus on treatment options and corresponding neural changes to identify relevant paths for future (neuroscientific) research.

People's attention cannot help being affected by what others are looking at. The dot-perspective task has been often employed to investigate this visual attentional shift. In this task, participants are presented with virtual scenes with a cue facing some targets and must judge how many targets are visible from their own or the cue perspective. Typically, this task shows an interference pattern: Participants record slower reaction times (RTs) and more errors when the cue is facing away from the targets. Interestingly, this occurs also when participants take their own perspective. Two accounts contend the explanation of this interference. The mentalising account focuses on the social relevance of the cue, while the domain-general account focuses on the directional features of the cue. To investigate the relative contribution of the two accounts, we developed a Social_Only cue, a cue having only social features and compared its effects with a Social+Directional cue, which had both social and directional features. Results show that while the Social+Directional cue generates the typical interference pattern, the Social_Only cue does not generate interference in the RTs, only in the error rate. We advance an integration between the mentalising and the domain-general accounts. We suggest that the dot-perspective task requires two processes: an orienting process, elicited by the directional features of the cue and measured by the RTs, and a decisional process elicited by the social features of the cue and measured also by the error rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Pronounced alexithymia traits have been found in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and recent research has been carving out the impact alexithymia traits might have on mentalising deficits associated with ASD. Method In this cross-sectional study, a large representative referral population for diagnostic examination for possible ASD (n = 400) was screened for clinical alexithymia with a German version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RME). In contrast to previous attempts to carve out the impact of alexithymia traits on mentalising deficits though, we employed dominance analysis to account for the correlation between predictors. The relative relationship between alexithymia traits and autism traits with RME performance was investigated in the group of individuals with confirmed ASD diagnosis (N = 281) and compared to the clinical referral sample in which ASD was ruled out (N = 119). Results Dominance analysis revealed autism traits to be the strongest predictor for reduced mentalising skills in the ASD sample, whereas alexithymia contributed significantly less. In the sample of individuals with ruled out diagnosis, autism traits were the strongest predictor, but alexithymia traits were in sum equally associated to mentalising, with the External-Oriented Thinking subscale as an important predictor of this association. Limitations It needs to be considered that the cross-sectional study design does not allow for causal inference. Furthermore, mentalising is a highly facetted capacity and measurements need to reduce this complexity into simple quantities which limits the generalizability of results. Discussion While alexithymia traits should be considered for their mental health importance, they do not dominate the explanation of reduced mentalising skills in individuals with ASD, but they might do to a larger degree in individuals with ruled out ASD.

Objective: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a psychiatric condition characterised by a pervasive pattern of impulsivity, low self-image, and interpersonal conflicts. Previous findings indicate a mixed relationship between BPD and social cognition; little research as investigated whether BPD traits influence performance on specific elements of social cognitive tasks, i.e., positive/negative valence. Method: Community-based typical controls (n = 151; 51% female) were recruited through an online survey. Participants completed aspects of the Personality Assessment Inventory pertaining to BPD traits, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and measures of both emotion recognition and mentalising. Results: Following group stratification into high/low BPD traits, participants with high BPD traits were observed to perform significantly better when identifying negative valence stimuli. Furthermore, high levels of affect instability was found to significantly influence negative valence recognition. Conclusion: This research highlights previous research which shows a paradox between higher performance on measures of social cognition, with a group of individuals who report significant interpersonal and relational difficulties. This research supports the assessment of social cognitive processes for people with BPD and/or high BPD traits to support clinical formulation of strengths and difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diametrically aberrant mentalising biases, namely hypermentalising in psychosis and hypomentalising in autism, are postulated by some theoretical models. To test this hypothesis, we measured psychotic-like experiences, autistic traits and mentalising biases in a visual chasing paradigm. Participants from the general population (N = 300) and psychotic patients (N=26) judged the absence or presence of a chase during five-second long displays of seemingly randomly moving dots. Hypermentalising is seeing a chase where there is none, whereas hypomentalising is missing to see a chase. Psychotic-like experiences were associated with hypermentalising. Autistic traits were not associated with hypomentalising, but with a reduced ability to discriminate chasing from non-chasing trials. Given the high correlation (τ =.41) between autistic traits and psychotic-like experiences, we controlled for concomitant symptom severity on agency detection. We found that all but those with many autistic and psychotic traits showed hypomentalising, suggesting an additive effect of traits on mentalising. In the second study, we found no hypermentalising in patients with psychosis, who performed also similarly to a matched control group. The results suggest that hypermentalising is a cognitive bias restricted to subclinical psychotic-like experiences. There was no support for a diametrically opposite mentalising bias along the autism-psychosis continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ObjectiveBorderline personality disorder (BPD) is a psychiatric condition characterised by a pervasive pattern of impulsivity, low self-image, and interpersonal conflicts. Previous findings indicate a mixed relationship between BPD and social cognition; little research as investigated whether BPD traits influence performance on specific elements of social cognitive tasks, i.e., positive/negative valence.MethodCommunity-based typical controls (n = 151; 51% female) were recruited through an online survey. Participants completed aspects of the Personality Assessment Inventory pertaining to BPD traits, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and measures of both emotion recognition and mentalising.ResultsFollowing group stratification into high/low BPD traits, participants with high BPD traits were observed to perform significantly better when identifying negative valence stimuli. Furthermore, high levels of affect instability was found to significantly influence negative valence recognition.ConclusionThis research highlights previous research which shows a paradox between higher performance on measures of social cognition, with a group of individuals who report significant interpersonal and relational difficulties. This research supports the assessment of social cognitive processes for people with BPD and/or high BPD traits to support clinical formulation of strengths and difficulties.

Background: Pronounced alexithymia traits have been found in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and recent research has been carving out the impact alexithymia traits might have on mentalising deficits associated with ASD. Method: In this cross-sectional study, a large representative referral population for diagnostic examination for possible ASD (n = 400) was screened for clinical alexithymia with a German version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RME). In contrast to previous attempts to carve out the impact of alexithymia traits on mentalising deficits though, we employed dominance analysis to account for the correlation between predictors. The relative relationship between alexithymia traits and autism traits with RME performance was investigated in the group of individuals with confirmed ASD diagnosis (N = 281) and compared to the clinical referral sample in which ASD was ruled out (N = 119). Results: Dominance analysis revealed autism traits to be the strongest predictor for reduced mentalising skills in the ASD sample, whereas alexithymia contributed significantly less. In the sample of individuals with ruled out diagnosis, autism traits were the strongest predictor, but alexithymia traits were in sum equally associated to mentalising, with the External-Oriented Thinking subscale as an important predictor of this association. Limitations: It needs to be considered that the cross-sectional study design does not allow for causal inference. Furthermore, mentalising is a highly facetted capacity and measurements need to reduce this complexity into simple quantities which limits the generalizability of results. Discussion: While alexithymia traits should be considered for their mental health importance, they do not dominate the explanation of reduced mentalising skills in individuals with ASD, but they might do to a larger degree in individuals with ruled out ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual perspective taking may rely on the ability to mentally rotate one's own body into that of another. Here, we test whether participants' ability to make active body movements plays a causal role in visual perspective taking. We utilised our recent task that measures whether participants spontaneously represent another's visual perspective in a (quasi-)perceptual format that can drive own perceptual decision making. Participants reported whether alphanumeric characters, presented in different orientations, are shown in their normal or mirror-inverted form (e.g., "R" vs. "Я"). Between trials, we manipulated whether another person was sitting either left or right of the character and whether participants' movement was restricted with a chinrest or whether they could move freely. As in our previous research, participants spontaneously took the visual perspective of the other person, recognising rotated letters more rapidly when they appeared upright to the other person in the scene, compared with when they faced away from that person, and these effects increased with age but were (weakly) negatively related to schizotypy and not to autistic traits or social skills. Restricting participants' ability to make active body movements did not influence these effects. The results, therefore, rule out that active physical movement plays a causal role in computing another's visual perspective, either to create alignment between own and other's perspective or to trigger perspective taking processes. The postural adjustments people sometimes make when making judgements from another's perspective may instead be a bodily consequence of mentally transforming one's actual to an imagined position in space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Murphy et al. (2022) raised concerns regarding the validity of the Four-Item Mentalising Index (FIMI). We wholeheartedly agree with Murphy et al. that there are problems in the social cognition literature hampering research. However, we maintain the FIMI is conceptually grounded in empirical and theoretical research, and that concerns regarding its construct validity are overstated. Drawing on recent research, we also discuss issues concerning the interpretation of discriminant validity analyses and discuss approaches to improve objectivity in future research. Overall, we argue that the FIMI is a conceptually and psychometrically sound measure, which has utility in future social cognition research and clinical practice. Public Significance Statement: We discuss a recent critique of a new mentalising measure, the Four-Item Mentalising Index (FIMI). We agree there are issues within the social cognition literature, but argue that the criticisms put forth about the FIMI are overstated. Using recent literature to support our arguments, we maintain that the FIMI is a valid, reliable, and valuable new tool for measuring mentalising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID‐19 has triggered a shift towards remote delivery of therapy and, despite a number of benefits, it risks discriminating against young people already marginalised due to adverse early life experiences, poverty or ethnicity. This editorial perspective considers challenges for remote therapy, focusing on: the financial burden of telehealth; the necessity of safety to speak; and, how telehealth may exacerbate difficulties in therapeutic alliance formation by interfering with epistemic trust and mentalising. As well as compounding the inaccessibility for children who are subject to abuse, the implicit assumptions behind telehealth risk disproportionately excluding from therapy those from a low socioeconomic status, and who are from ethnic minorities. Suggestions are made for how these challenges may be addressed. It is argued that service design and delivery should seek to proceed with the practicalities and principles of engagement in mind and use this as an opportunity to improve parity of access, rather than risk further entrenching inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Findings are mixed regarding the link between theory of mind (ToM) and alexithymia. • We provide a taxonomy of ToM measures and their relationship with alexithymia. • Alexithymia relates to poor ToM where tasks involve emotion recognition. • Alexithymia may also relate to a reduced propensity to engage in ToM. • This review highlights a need to consider the processes quantified by ToM tasks. Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to represent the mental states of oneself and others, is an essential social skill disrupted across many psychiatric conditions. The transdiagnostic nature of ToM impairment means it is plausible that ToM impairment is related to alexithymia (difficulties identifying and describing one's own emotions), as alexithymia is seen across psychiatric conditions. Whilst many studies have examined links between alexithymia and ToM, results are mixed. Therefore, the purpose of this systematic review is to provide a taxonomy of ToM tests and assess their relationship with alexithymia. Tests are grouped according to whether they assess propensity to engage spontaneously in ToM or accuracy of ToM inferences, with tests further subdivided into those that do, and do not, require emotion recognition. A review of 63 suitable studies suggests that alexithymia is often associated with reduced ToM, and inaccurate ToM when tasks require emotion recognition. This latter finding appears due to impaired emotion recognition, rather than ToM impairment per se. Further directions and considerations for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to most other mammals and birds, anthropoid primates have unusually complex societies characterised by bonded social groups. Among primates, this effect is encapsulated in the social brain hypothesis: the robust correlation between various indices of social complexity (social group size, grooming clique size, tactical behaviour, coalition formation) and brain size. Hitherto, this has always been interpreted as a simple, unitary relationship. Using data for five different indices of brain volume from four independent brain databases, we show that the distribution of group size plotted against brain size is best described as a set of four distinct, very narrowly defined grades which are unrelated to phylogeny. The allocation of genera to these grades is highly consistent across the different data sets and brain indices. We show that these grades correspond to the progressive evolution of bonded social groups. In addition, we show, for those species that live in multilevel social systems, that the typical sizes of the different grouping levels in each case coincide with different grades. This suggests that the grades correspond to demographic attractors that are especially stable. Using five different cognitive indices, we show that the grades correlate with increasing social cognitive skills, suggesting that the cognitive demands of managing group cohesion increase progressively across grades. We argue that the grades themselves represent glass ceilings on animals' capacity to maintain social and spatial coherence during foraging and that, in order to evolve more highly bonded groups, species have to be able to invest in costly forms of cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Frith–Happé Animations Test, depicting interactions between triangles, is widely used to measure theory of mind (ToM) ability in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This test began with recording, transcribing, and subjectively scoring participants' verbal descriptions, which consistently found ToM‐specific difficulties in ASD. More recently in 2011, White et al. created a more objective version of this ToM test using multiple‐choice questions. However, there has been surprisingly little uptake of this test, hence it is currently unclear if White et al.'s findings replicate. Further, the lack of an online version of the test may be hampering its use in large‐scale studies and outside of research settings. Addressing these issues, we report the development of a web‐based version of the Frith–Happé Animations Test for autistic and neurotypical adults. An online version of the test was developed in a large general population sample (study 1; N = 285) and online data were compared with those collected in a lab‐based setting (study 2; N = 339). The new online test was then administered to adults with a clinical diagnosis of ASD and matched neurotypical controls (study 3; N = 231). Results demonstrated that the test could successfully be administered online to autistic adults, who showed ToM difficulties compared to neurotypical adults, replicating White et al.'s findings. Overall, we have developed a quicker, more objective, and web‐based version of the Frith–Happé Animations Test that will be useful for social cognition research within and beyond the field of autism, with potential utility for clinical settings. Lay Summary: Many autistic people find it hard to understand what other people are thinking. There are many tests for this 'mentalising' ability, but they often take a long time to complete and cannot be used outside of research settings. In 2011, scientists used short silent animations of moving shapes to create a fast way to measure mentalising ability. We developed this into an online test to use in research and clinics to measure mentalising ability in autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upon learning of the story of Cinderella, most people spontaneously adopt the emotional perspective of this helpless young woman rather than of her older sisters who oppress her. The present research examines whether this pattern reveals a general human tendency to empathise more with the emotions of individuals with low (versus high) power. Six experiments (N = 878) examined how power influences the focus of people's emotional attributions. Participants were presented with situations in which one character exercised power over another one and had to resolve a referential ambiguity by considering the perspective of one or the other character. Results show that participants largely privileged the emotional states of the low-power character over those of the high-power character. This effect was observed with different types of stimuli (comics and video clips), with high- and low-power roles attributed to pairs of different genders (Experiments 1–4) or same gender (Experiments 5–6). Finally, the tendency persisted – though it was reduced – when participants adopted a less passive role with respect to the characters (Experiment 3) and when power occurred in a less despotic way (Experiment 6). Results are discussed with respect to social attention and sensitivity to fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mentalising, also known as "Theory of Mind", is the ability to understand and infer the cognitions of others, such as their perceptions, intentions, and beliefs. Although several tools have been designed to measure mentalising in adults, there exist methodological and practical limitations. Many of the existing measures conflate mentalising with similar constructs (e.g., empathy), and most are lengthy measures that are unsuitable for large population-based studies and clinical practice. These issues are currently hampering clinical and non-clinical investigations into mentalising and related social-cognitive abilities. Drawing on questionnaire measures of social cognition, we conceived a self-report mentalising scale, the Four-Item Mentalising Index (FIMI; Studies 1a and b). The FIMI was developed through a series of studies examining its factor structure and reliability (Studies 2a and b) and by testing its construct validity against a cognitive mentalising task, autistic traits, and comparing scores in autistic and non-autistic people (Studies 3a and b). Together, we demonstrate that the FIMI is a conceptually and methodologically robust tool for measuring mentalising ability in the general population, including autistic and non-autistic people. Future research directions and practical (clinical) applications of the scale are discussed, with a focus on improving understanding and management of (a)typical mentalising ability. Public Significance Statement: We developed a reliable questionnaire to measure how well people understand what others are thinking. It was validated against an objective test and by giving the questionnaire to autistic people who are known to have difficulties understanding others. We discuss how this tool will be useful in future large-scale studies and clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This meta-analysis tested whether autistic people show a marked, isolated difficulty with mentalising when assessed using the Frith-Happé Animations, an advanced test of mentalising (or 'theory of mind'). Effect sizes were aggregated in multivariate meta-analysis from 33 papers reporting data for over 3000 autistic and non-autistic people. Relative to non-autistic individuals, autistic people underperformed, with a small effect size on the non-mentalising control conditions and a medium effect size on the mentalising condition. This indicates that studies have reliably found mentalising to be an area of challenge for autistic people, although the group differences were not large. It remains to be seen how important mentalising difficulties are in accounting for the social difficulties diagnostic of autism. As autistic people underperformed on the control conditions as well as the mentalising condition, it is likely that group differences on the test are partly due to domain-general information processing differences. Finally, there was evidence of publication bias, suggesting that true effects on the Frith-Happé Animations may be somewhat smaller than reported in the literature. Autistic people are thought to have difficulty with mentalising (our drive to track and understand the minds of other people). Mentalising is often measured by the Frith-Happé Animations task, where individuals need to interpret the interactions of abstract shapes. This review article collated results from over 3000 people to assess how autistic people performed on the task. Analysis showed that autistic people tended to underperform compared to non-autistic people on the task, although the scale of the difference was moderate rather than large. Also, autistic people showed some difficulty with the non-mentalising as well as mentalising aspects of the task. These results raise questions about the scale and specificity of mentalising difficulties in autism. It also remains unclear how well mentalising difficulties account for the social challenges diagnostic of autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language does not leave a fossil we can put under a microscope; there is no living witness to its origin, early functions and its stages of evolution. Thus, the study of language origin and development is based mostly on speculations or guesses we need to take in order to see the big picture and to try to solve some of the greatest mysteries of human history - a jigsaw puzzle made out of millions of pieces scattered around the world. So as to fully explore and grasp the notion of language, it appears fundamental to start from dissecting and putting under a microscope all components, properties, processes and manifestations of language, a selection of which has been offered throughout this paper. There are very few certainties in this field; however, it has been established that certain properties and aspects of language had to coincide for it to originate, viz. the descent of the larynx, the growth and reshaping of the brain and skull, changes of speech apparatus and finally the emergence of syntax. First though, a collective shift in thinking must have occurred, generating the mental readiness for language capacity and the need to expand the existing communication system. Once the requirement was established, human anatomy must have eventually followed. Consequently, the process of externalization was activated, engineered by the consistent and coherent socio-cultural transmission, which redesigned human interaction, communication and social organisation. Scientific evidence, presented in this paper, suggests that language could not have emerged as a result of a sudden shift, on the contrary, it must have been a result of complex processes, mental and biological on one level and social and psychological on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mind‐mindedness is a measure of the tendency to represent significant others in internal state terms and is central to supportive parent–infant relationships. The two studies reported here explored whether mind‐mindedness generalizes to representations of unknown individuals, using a novel task that assessed individual differences in adults' tendency to interpret others' behavior with reference to their internal states: the Unknown Mother–Infant Interaction Task (UMIIT). We compared UMIIT performance with measures of mind‐mindedness from (a) adults' descriptions of close friends and partners (Study 1, N = 96) and (b) mothers' appropriate versus nonattuned comments on their infants' internal states (Study 2, N = 56). In line with the proposal that mind‐mindedness is a relational construct, UMIIT performance was unrelated to mind‐mindedness in both studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The co-occurrence between autism and gender dysphoria has received much attention recently. We found that, among 101 adults from the general population number of autism traits, as measured using the autism-spectrum quotient was associated significantly with recalled and current gender dysphoric traits. Furthermore, performance on an objective measure of mentalising, such as the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test was associated with current gender dysphoric traits, but most importantly it moderated the relation between number of autism traits and number of current gender dysphoric traits, such that the association was significant only when mentalising ability was relatively low. Results suggest mentalising may represent a contributing factor to the relation between autism and gender dysphoric traits in the general population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some people with autism spectrum disorders have been observed to experience difficulties with making correct inferences in conversations in social situations. However, the nature and origin of their problem is rarely investigated. This study used manipulations of video stimuli to investigate two questions. The first question was whether it is the number of people involved in social situations, that is, the source of problems in following conversations, or whether it is the increased mentalising demands required to comprehend interactions between several people. The second question asked was whether the nature and pattern of the errors that autism spectrum disorder participants show are the same as typically developing people make when they make an error. In total, 43 typically developed adults and 30 adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder were studied. We found that it was the amount of mentalising required, rather than the number of people involved, which caused problems for people with autism spectrum disorder in following conversations. Furthermore, the autism spectrum disorder participants showed a more heterogeneous pattern of errors, showing less agreement among themselves than the typically developed group as to which test items were hardest. So, fully understanding the observed behaviour consequent upon weakness in mentalising ability in people with autism spectrum disorders requires consideration of factors other than mentalising. People with autism spectrum disorders sometimes report difficulties with following observed conversations in social situations, especially those where several people are interacting with each other. But this has rarely been investigated directly. This study determines whether people with autism spectrum disorders do indeed have problems following observed conversations even when they perform well on IQ tests and investigates two possible reasons for any difficulty found: (1) some people may have a problem integrating stimuli from multiple speakers; (2) following a conversation between many people might make particularly high demands on mentalising abilities. We used a variety of video clips of people conversing together to investigate these two possibilities in 30 adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and 43 age- and IQ-matched typical-developing adults. We found that it was the amount of mentalising required, rather than the number of people involved, which caused problems for people with autism spectrum disorder in following conversations. Furthermore, when the autism spectrum disorder participants made a mistake, the error they made was frequently not the same error that typically developed participants made, and the autism spectrum disorder population made a more varied set of errors than the typically developed participants. Together, these results suggest that people with autism spectrum disorders observe significant problems with following conversations between many people when they contain a lot of mentalising material, but where they do make a mistake, the conclusions they draw from the conversation they are observing may have a more complex cause than an impairment in mentalising alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with conduct problems (CP) and high levels of callous-unemotional traits (CP/HCU) have been found to have an intact ability to represent other minds, however, they behave in ways that indicate a reduced propensity to consider other people's thoughts and feelings. Here we report findings from three tasks assessing different aspects of mentalising in 81 boys aged 11-16 [Typically developing (TD) n = 27; CP/HCU n = 28; CP and low levels of callous-unemotional traits (CP/LCU) n = 26]. Participants completed the Movie Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC), a task assessing ability/propensity to incorporate judgements concerning an individual's mind into mental state inference; provided a written description of a good friend to assess mind-mindedness; and completed the Social Judgement Task (SJT), a new measure assessing mentalising about antisocial actions. Boys with CP/HCU had more difficulty in accurately inferring others' mental states in the MASC than TD and CP/LCU boys. There were no group differences in the number of mind-related comments as assessed by the mind-mindedness protocol or in responses to the SJT task. These findings suggest that although the ability to represent mental states is intact, CP/HCU boys are less likely to update mental state inferences as a function of different minds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin have been repeatedly implicated in social decision making by enhancing social salience and, generally, cooperation. The iterated and sequential version of the prisoner's dilemma (PD) game is a social dilemma paradigm eliciting strategies of cooperation versus competition.Aims: We aimed to characterise the role of PD players' sex, game partner type (computer vs. human) and oxytocin or vasopressin inhalation on the player's strategy preference.Methods: Participants (153 men; 151 women) were randomised to intranasal 24 IU oxytocin, 20 IU vasopressin or placebo, double-blind, and played the PD. We examined main and interactive effects of sex, drug and partner type on strategy preference.Results: We found a pervasive preference for a tit-for-tat strategy (i.e. general sensitivity to the partner's choices) over unconditional cooperation, particularly when against a human rather than a computer partner. Oxytocin doubled this sensitivity in women (i.e. the preference for tit-for-tat over unconditional cooperation strategies) when playing against computers, which suggests a tendency to anthropomorphise them, and doubled women's unconditional cooperation preference when playing against humans. Vasopressin doubled sensitivity to the partner's previous choices (i.e. for tit-for-tat over unconditional cooperation) across sexes and partner types.Conclusions: These findings suggest that women may be more sensitive to oxytocin's social effects of anthropomorphism of non-humans and of unconditional cooperation with humans, which may be consistent with evolutionary pressures for maternal care, and that vasopressin, irrespective of sex and partner type, may be generally sensitising humans to others' behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experience of interpersonal trauma and violence alters self-other distinction and mentalising abilities (also known as theory of mind, or ToM), yet little is known about their neural correlates. This fMRI study assessed temporoparietal junction (TPJ) activation, an area strongly implicated in interpersonal processing, during spontaneous mentalising in 35 adult women with histories of childhood physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse (childhood abuse; CA) and 31 women without such experiences (unaffected comparisons; UC). Participants watched movies during which an agent formed true or false beliefs about the location of a ball, while participants always knew the true location of the ball. As hypothesised, right TPJ activation was greater for UCs compared to CAs for false vs true belief conditions. In addition, CAs showed increased functional connectivity relative to UCs between the rTPJ and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Finally, the agent's belief about the presence of the ball influenced participants' responses (ToM index), but without group differences. These findings highlight that experiencing early interpersonal trauma can alter brain areas involved in the neural processing of ToM and perspective-taking during adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The client interview is an integral part of a lawyer's work. Despite this, there is little research focused on the client interview and how it might influence the economy of the legal strategies and processes that follow. This study examined students' perceptions of perspective-taking, trust, self-disclosure and understanding in a client interview where the students took the roles of either a lawyer or client in a dispute resolution context. The results revealed that the client's perception of their lawyer's perspective-taking increased their trust in the lawyer, which increased their self-disclosure, which subsequently helped the clients to gain a better understanding of their situation. The results illustrate the importance of the key relational aspects during consultation and accords with similar findings in the procedural justice and mentalising literature. The findings could have powerful implications for rethinking the purpose and aims of the lawyer-client interview and helping lawyers to reshape the outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]