Teachers recruit mentalizing regions to represent learners’ beliefs

Abstract

Teaching enables humans to impart vast stores of culturally specific knowledge and skills. However, little is known about the neural computations that guide teachers’ decisions about what information to communicate. Participants (N = 28) played the role of teachers while being scanned using fMRI; their task was to select examples that would teach learners how to answer abstract multiple-choice questions. Participants’ examples were best described by a model that selects evidence that maximizes the learner’s belief in the correct answer. Consistent with this idea, participants’ predictions about how well learners would do closely tracked the performance of an independent sample of learners (N = 140) who were tested on the examples they had provided. In addition, regions that play specialized roles in processing social information, namely the bilateral temporoparietal junction and middle and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, tracked learners’ posterior belief in the correct answer. Our results shed light on the computational and neural architectures that support our extraordinary abilities as teachers.

Representation of Others' Beliefs

“…Researchers from these diverse fields are interested in unraveling the complex cognitive processes that underlie our ability to reason about the thoughts and beliefs of other individuals. Educators, for example, need to have a deep understanding of how students perceive themselves and others (i.e., represent learners' beliefs), in order to create effective and inclusive learning environments (Vélez et al, 2023). In clinical psychology, the ability to accurately interpret and understand the mental states of patients is crucial for providing appropriate interventions and treatments (Salvatore et al, 2012).…”

A Hierarchical Bayesian Model of Adaptive Teaching

“…We begin by assuming teachers and learners are rational agents that choose actions proportional to their expected utility (Bridgers, Jara-Ettinger, & Gweon, 2020;Jara-Ettinger et al, 2016;Vélez, Chen, Burke, Cushman, & Gershman, 2023). Here, the actions available to teachers and learners are communicative acts-teachers can communicate with learners by choosing examples, and learners can communicate with teachers by providing feedback (Fig.…”