Are All Beliefs Equal? Implicit Belief Attributions Recruiting Core Brain Regions of Theory of Mind

Abstract

Humans possess efficient mechanisms to behave adaptively in social contexts. They ascribe goals and beliefs to others and use these for behavioural predictions. Researchers argued for two separate mental attribution systems: an implicit and automatic one involved in online interactions, and an explicit one mainly used in offline deliberations. However, the underlying mechanisms of these systems and the types of beliefs represented in the implicit system are still unclear. Using neuroimaging methods, we show that the right temporo-parietal junction and the medial prefrontal cortex, brain regions consistently found to be involved in explicit mental state reasoning, are also recruited by spontaneous belief tracking. While the medial prefrontal cortex was more active when both the participant and another agent believed an object to be at a specific location, the right temporo-parietal junction was selectively activated during tracking the false beliefs of another agent about the presence, but not the absence of objects. While humans can explicitly attribute to a conspecific any possible belief they themselves can entertain, implicit belief tracking seems to be restricted to beliefs with specific contents, a content selectivity that may reflect a crucial functional characteristic and signature property of implicit belief attribution.

Perceived live interaction modulates the developing social brain

“…This null result is in contrast to research finding increased middle childhood specialization for explicit mentalizing in similar regions (Gweon et al, 2012). One possible explanation for this discrepancy is that, although similar brain regions are implicated in explicit and implicit mentalizing (Kovacs et al, 2014;Schneider et al, 2014), specialization for the more implicit mentalizing required by ongoing interaction-the type displayed in interactive contexts even by very young children-happens before explicit specialization. Perhaps regions implicated in explicit mentalizing have an ontogentically-prior role in supporting social interaction more broadly (e.g.…”

Infants understand deceptive intentions to implant false beliefs about identity: New evidence for early mentalistic reasoning

“…It could be “that there is just a single mindreading system that exists throughout, but which undergoes gradual conceptual enrichment through infancy and childhood” (p. 1). Recent neuroimaging findings with adults showing that the same core brain regions are recruited in intuitive and explicit false-belief tasks also support this one-system view (e.g., Hyde, Aparicio Betancourt, & Simon, in press; Kovács, Kühn, Gergely, Csibra, & Brass, 2014). …”

Psychological Reasoning in Infancy

“…These issues represent the new frontier in the research on early psychological reasoning, and findings from behavioral and neuroscientific methods are producing new insights (e.g., Hyde et al in press;Kovács et al 2014a). One other approach is also yielding thought-provoking results: over the past few years, researchers have begun to conduct longitudinal studies exploring the continuity of psychological reasoning from infancy to childhood (e.g., Aschersleben et al 2008;Thoermer et al 2012;Wellman et al 2008;Yamaguchi et al 2009).…”