Infants' Insight into the Mind: How Deep?

Perner, Josef; Ruffman, Ted

doi:10.1126/science.1111656

Cited by 411 publications

(302 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

286

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…First, it supports the theory that humans have two cognitive systems for mentalizing: one early--developing, automatic or 'fast--and--efficient' system (implicit), and a later--developing, controlled 'slow--and--flexible' system (explicit) (Apperly, 2011;Apperly & Butterfill, 2009). Second, it supports the controversial view (Heyes, in press;Moore & Corkum, 1994;Perner, 2010;Perner & Ruffman, 2005), based primarily on eye movement studies, that infants are capable of mentalizing (Baillargeon, Scott, & He, 2010;Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005). A range of procedures have been used to provide evidence of implicit mentalizing in adults (Heyes, under review), testing for automatic representation of what others see (Samson, Apperly, Braithwaite, Andrews, & Bodley Scott, 2010;Zwickel, 2009), intend (Sebanz, Knoblich, & Prinz, 2003), and believe (Kovács, Téglás, & Endress, 2010;Senju, Southgate, White, & Frith, 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 69%

Avatars and arrows: Implicit mentalizing or domain-general processing?

Santiesteban¹,

Catmur

Hopkins³

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

168

275

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous studies using the dot perspective task have shown that adults are slower to verify the number of dots they can see in a picture when a human figure in the picture, an avatar, can see a different number of dots. This "self-consistency effect," which occurs even when the avatar's perspective is formally task-irrelevant, has been interpreted as evidence of implicit mentalizing; that humans can think about the mental states of others via dedicated, automatic processes. We tested this interpretation by giving participants 2 versions of the dot perspective task. In some trials, the avatar was presented as in previous experiments, and in other trials the avatar was replaced by an arrow with similar low-level features. We found self-consistency effects of comparable size in the avatar and arrow conditions, suggesting that self-consistency effects in the dot perspective task are due to domain-general processes such as those that mediate automatic attentional orienting.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 69%

Avatars and arrows: Implicit mentalizing or domain-general processing?

Santiesteban¹,

Catmur

Hopkins³

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

168

275

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In this regard, the present results comport with recent findings by Onishi and Baillargeon (2005) that 15-month-olds expect an actor to behave according to the actor's belief about the state of the world, even when the actor's belief is false. Perner and Ruffman (2005); also Ruffman and Perner, 2005 suggested that the results of Onishi and Baillargeon sprang from a simple innate rule infants may have, rather than from any mentalistic notion. The proposed rule, that an actor should behave toward an object in the last location in which the actor saw the object, will not account for the present results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because belief and pretense (make-believe) are cognate concepts, a looking-time study of pretense could provide background evidence relevant to Onishi and Baillargeon's findings on false belief. For example, Perner and Ruffman (2005) suggested that these findings may have simply reflected infants' expectation that an actor will behave toward the last seen location of an object. Pretend scenarios allow us to test whether infants can form expectations with regard to an actor's pretend intentions toward an object or a property that does not exist and therefore was never seen.…”

Section: Goals Of the Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

15-month-old infants detect violations in pretend scenarios

2007

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Are 15-month-old infants able to detect a violation in the consistency of an event sequence that involves pretense? In Experiment 1, infants detected a violation when an actor pretended to pour liquid into one cup and then pretended to drink from another cup. In Experiment 2, infants no longer detected a violation when the cups were replaced with objects not typically used in the context of drinking actions, either shoes or tubes. Experiment 3 showed that infants' difficulty in Experiment 2 was not due to the use of atypical objects per se, but arose from the novelty of seeing an actor appearing to drink from these objects. After receiving a single familiarization trial in which they observed the actor pretend to drink from either a shoe or a tube, infants now detected a violation when the actor pretended to pour into and to drink from different shoes or tubes. Thus, at an age (or just before the age) when infants are beginning to engage in pretend play, they are able to show comprehension of at least one aspect of pretense in a violation-ofexpectation task: specifically, they are able to detect violations in the consistency of pretend action sequences.

show abstract

“…infants look longer at a scene in which someone acts against the false belief that they should hold concerning an object's location or contents) [12]. Whether these results tap the same socio-cognitive skill that 4-5 year-olds use to solve the Sally -Anne task is a matter of debate; for example, the babies may expect people to search for objects where they saw them last and so react with surprise to the novelty of the event without explicit knowledge of belief [13], perhaps reflecting the existence of two systems for tracking belief [14]. Nevertheless, the possibility that younger children can reckon on the falsely held representations of other individuals suggests that some other process changes between the ages of 3 and 4 years to enable older children to succeed on the Sally-Anne task [10,15].…”

Section: What Determines Success or Failure? Case Studies From Develomentioning

confidence: 99%

Chimpanzee ‘folk physics’: bringing failures into focus

Seed

Seddon

Greene

et al. 2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Differences between individuals are the raw material from which theories of the evolution and ontogeny of cognition are built. For example, when 4-year-old children pass a test requiring them to communicate the content of another's falsely held belief, while 3-year-olds fail, we know that something must change over the course of the third year of life. In the search for what develops or evolves, the typical route is to probe the extents and limits of successful individuals' ability. Another is to focus on those that failed, and find out what difference or lack prevented them from passing the task. Recent research in developmental psychology has harnessed individual differences to illuminate the cognitive mechanisms that emerge to enable success. We apply this approach to explaining some of the failures made by chimpanzees when using tools to solve problems. Twelve of 16 chimpanzees failed to discriminate between a complete and a broken tool when, after being set down, the ends of the broken one were aligned in front of them. There was a correlation between performance on this aligned task and another in which after being set down, the centre of both tools was covered, suggesting that the limiting factor was not the representation of connection, but memory or attention. Some chimpanzees that passed the aligned task passed a task in which the location of the broken tool was never visible but had to be inferred.

show abstract

Infants' Insight into the Mind: How Deep?

Cited by 411 publications

References 12 publications

Avatars and arrows: Implicit mentalizing or domain-general processing?

Avatars and arrows: Implicit mentalizing or domain-general processing?

15-month-old infants detect violations in pretend scenarios

Chimpanzee ‘folk physics’: bringing failures into focus

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About