Beyond avatars and arrows: Testing the mentalising and submentalising hypotheses with a novel entity paradigm

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a heated debate about how to interpret findings that seem to show that humans rapidly and automatically calculate the visual perspectives of others. In the current study, we investigated the question of whether automatic interference effects found in the dot-perspective task (Samson, Apperly, Braithwaite, Andrews, & Bodley Scott, 2010) are the product of domain-specific perspective-taking processes or of domain-general “submentalizing” processes (Heyes, 2014). Previous attempts to address this question have done so by implementing inanimate controls, such as arrows, as stimuli. The rationale for this is that submentalizing processes that respond to directionality should be engaged by such stimuli, whereas domain-specific perspective-taking mechanisms, if they exist, should not. These previous attempts have been limited, however, by the implied intentionality of the stimuli they have used (e.g. arrows), which may have invited participants to imbue them with perspectival agency. Drawing inspiration from “novel entity” paradigms from infant gaze-following research, we designed a version of the dot-perspective task that allowed us to precisely control whether a central stimulus was viewed as animate or inanimate. Across four experiments, we found no evidence that automatic “perspective-taking” effects in the dot-perspective task are modulated by beliefs about the animacy of the central stimulus. Our results also suggest that these effects may be due to the task-switching elements of the dot-perspective paradigm, rather than automatic directional orienting. Together, these results indicate that neither the perspective-taking nor the standard submentalizing interpretations of the dot-perspective task are fully correct.

Unveiling the Dot-perspective Task: Integrating Implicit-mentalistic with Sub-mentalistic Processes

“…Therefore, the hierarchy in the salience of the cues may explain visual-access-generated implicit mentalising dominates in processing eye-head cues and nger-pointing-generated attentional orienting dominates in processing eye-nger-pointing cues in the dot-perspective task. This is compatible with the statements that neither implicit mentalising nor submentalising accounts of the dot-perspective task are fully correct [32], and that an integrated framework combining the attribution of mentalising and the operation of submentalising processes can account for social orienting [33].…”

Patterns of multiple brain network activation in dot perspective task

“…Importantly, the contamination by the other’s perspective would take place spontaneously and occurs even when it is not pertinent for, and even a hindrance to, the achievement of our own goals. To date, there is still an ongoing theoretical debate of whether these interference effects in the dot-perspective task represent implicit mentalizing that would depend on the human nature of the Avatar or domain-general attention-orienting processes that would occur even when an arrow replaces the avatar form (for review see 11 – 14 ).…”

Two systems of mind reading? A critical analysis of the two-systems theory

“…Esto socava la afirmación de la TDS de que los procesos de S1 están encapsulados (Westra, 2017) y demuestra que la información almacenada rápidamente en memoria visual a corto plazo guía el comportamiento de observación intencional de los bebés en las tareas de TP1 y anticipación de la mirada. En otras palabras, la TP1 y la lectura de mentes implícita pueden implicar conjuntos de procesos superpuestos y no encapsulados para el procesamiento de estímulos sociales (Westra, 2017;Westra et al, 2021), o en su defecto, los procesos de dominio general involucrados en la TP1, p. ej., la atención, la percepción de señales sociales, la memoria de trabajo rudimentaria y la disposición para mapear rasgos asociados a conductas u objetos, estarían involucrados en los procesos de dominio específico de lectura de mente implícita, p.…”

“…Sin embargo, Carruthers (2016Carruthers ( , 2017 y Westra (2017Westra ( , 2021 sostienen que los métodos de evaluación de TP2 que utiliza un avatar en una pantalla son un factor de confusión que limita la interferencia altercéntrica 7 y el rendimiento en el tiempo de procesamiento cognitivo de los participantes para adoptar la perspectiva del avatar en estímulos inconsistentes. Los autores argumentan que la falta de interferencia altercéntrica en las tareas de toma de perspectiva se debe a factores motivacionales, más no de límites en el procesamiento cognitivo de estímulos.…”