The director task: A test of Theory-of-Mind use or selective attention?

Rubio-Fernández, Paula

doi:10.3758/s13423-016-1190-7

Cited by 34 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…However, rather than concluding that participants' poor performance in the director task might be related to their Executive Control (rather than to their Theory of Mind, as is generally assumed), Lin et al (2010) interpreted their results as evidence that using Theory of Mind in communication is cognitively costly. While we agree that the setup of the director task is likely to tax Executive Control, we disagree that that particular task be representative of common ground use in normal conversation (Rubio-Fernández, 2017). Therefore, concluding from the results of the director task that people have difficulties using Theory of Mind in everyday communication seems unwarranted.…”

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confidence: 75%

“…While some forms of belief reasoning may be deliberative (e.g., assessing an audience's expertise when preparing a talk) and others may be spontaneous (e.g., as when poker players try to guess what the others are thinking), here we want to challenge the view that belief inferences cannot be derived automatically and propose that everyday conversation is the natural arena for testing such a hypothesis. Consider the following example (adapted from Geurts & Rubio-Fernández, 2015;Rubio-Fernández, 2017): imagine that you are eating at a restaurant when a customer at another table tells you 'That greasy food is terrible for your ulcer'. If this person were a stranger, his comment would immediately strike you as creepy.…”

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How do you know that? Automatic belief inferences in passing conversation

et al. 2019

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There is an ongoing debate, both in philosophy and psychology, as to whether people are able to automatically infer what others may know, or whether they can only derive belief inferences by deploying cognitive resources. Evidence from laboratory tasks, often involving false beliefs or visual-perspective taking, has suggested that belief inferences are cognitively costly, controlled processes. Here we suggest that in everyday conversation, belief reasoning is pervasive and therefore potentially automatic in some cases. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two pre-registered self-paced reading experiments (N 1 = 91, N 2 = 89). The results of these experiments showed that participants slowed down when a stranger commented 'That greasy food is bad for your ulcer' relative to conditions where a stranger commented on their own ulcer or a friend made either comment-none of which violated participants' commonground expectations. We conclude that Theory of Mind models need to account for belief reasoning in conversation as it is at the center of everyday social interaction. for theoretical models of adult social cognition that fail to account for belief reasoning in conversation (e.g., Apperly & Butterfill, 2009; Heyes, 2014) and as a result leave out of their scope the bulk of the data observed in everyday social interaction. Here we argue that belief reasoning is pervasive in communication and therefore needs to be investigated and characterized in conversational settings, and not only in false-belief tasks. Does communication involve belief reasoning? A popular theoretical view, both in philosophy and psychology, is the hypothesis that attributing mental states to others (not only beliefs, but also intentions and desires) is too cognitively demanding to be the basis for real-time social interaction (e.g.

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How do you know that? Automatic belief inferences in passing conversation

et al. 2019

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“…These findings suggest that the Director’s Task could have low reliability, such that task performance appears to vary quite substantially from study to study. There have also been concerns over the validity of the Director’s Task as an actual measure of visual perspective taking [49, 50, 51, 52], For example, it has been proposed that the Director’s Task can be approached using a simple trial and error strategy [49]. Indeed, researchers who have used the Director’s Task in the past have, more recently, questioned whether or not it requires mentalising [52].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of prosocial priming on visual perspective taking and automatic imitation

Newey¹,

Koldewyn²,

Ramsey³

2019

PLoS ONE

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Imitation and perspective taking are core features of non-verbal social interactions. We imitate one another to signal a desire to affiliate and consider others’ points of view to better understand their perspective. Prior research suggests that a relationship exists between prosocial behaviour and imitation. For example, priming prosocial behaviours has been shown to increase imitative tendencies in automatic imitation tasks. Despite its importance during social interactions, far less is known about how perspective taking might relate to either prosociality or imitation. The current study investigates the relationship between automatic imitation and perspective taking by testing the extent to which these skills are similarly modulated by prosocial priming. Across all experimental groups, a surprising ceiling effect emerged in the perspective taking task (the Director’s Task), which prevented the investigation of prosocial priming on perspective taking. A comparison of other studies using the Director’s Task shows wide variability in accuracy scores across studies and is suggestive of low task reliability. In addition, despite using a high-power design, and contrary to three previous studies, no effect of prosocial prime on imitation was observed. Meta-analysing all studies to date suggests that the effects of prosocial primes on imitation are variable and could be small. The current study, therefore, offers caution when using the computerised Director’s Task as a measure of perspective taking with adult populations, as it shows high variability across studies and may suffer from a ceiling effect. In addition, the results question the size and robustness of prosocial priming effects on automatic imitation. More generally, by reporting null results we hope to minimise publication bias and by meta-analysing results as studies emerge and making data freely available, we hope to move towards a more cumulative science of social cognition.

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“…The development of social perspective taking usage and its links with social behavior and brain structure should be further investigated with longitudinal data. Second, an important question is whether errors in the experimental condition of the director task actually reflect failure to use social perspective taking, which involves some understanding of another person’s preferences, goals, intentions and so forth, or selective attention ( Rubio-Fernandez, 2017 ) or visuospatial manipulation failure ( Fett et al, 2014 ). Studies of adults indicate that errors on this type of task do not arise simply as a result of failure to effectively switch perspectives ( Apperly et al, 2010 ), but further studies on developmental samples comparing visuospatial processing abilities and performance on the director task are called for.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social perspective taking is associated with self-reported prosocial behavior and regional cortical thickness across adolescence.

Tamnes¹,

Øverbye²,

Ferschmann³

et al. 2018

Developmental Psychology

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Basic perspective taking and mentalizing abilities develop in childhood, but recent studies indicate that the use of social perspective taking to guide decisions and actions has a prolonged development that continues throughout adolescence. Here, we aimed to replicate this research and investigate the hypotheses that individual differences in social perspective taking in adolescence are associated with real-life prosocial and antisocial behavior and differences in brain structure. We used an experimental approach and a large cross-sectional sample (n = 293) of participants aged 7–26 years old to assess age-related improvement in social perspective taking usage during performance of a version of the director task. In subsamples, we then tested how individual differences in social perspective taking were related to self-reported prosocial behavior and peer relationship problems on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (n = 184) and to MRI measures of regional cortical thickness and surface area (n = 226). The pattern of results in the director task replicated previous findings by demonstrating continued improvement in use of social perspective taking across adolescence. The study also showed that better social perspective taking usage is associated with more self-reported prosocial behavior, as well as to thinner cerebral cortex in regions in the left hemisphere encompassing parts of the caudal middle frontal and precentral gyri and lateral parietal regions. These associations were observed independently of age and might partly reflect individual developmental variability. The relevance of cortical development was additionally supported by indirect effects of age on social perspective taking usage via cortical thickness.

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The director task: A test of Theory-of-Mind use or selective attention?

Cited by 34 publications

References 28 publications

How do you know that? Automatic belief inferences in passing conversation

How do you know that? Automatic belief inferences in passing conversation

The influence of prosocial priming on visual perspective taking and automatic imitation

Social perspective taking is associated with self-reported prosocial behavior and regional cortical thickness across adolescence.

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