The Two-Systems Account of Theory of Mind: Testing the Links to Social- Perceptual and Cognitive Abilities

Abstract

According to the two-systems account of theory of mind (ToM), understanding mental states of others involves both fast social-perceptual processes, as well as slower, reflexive cognitive operations (Frith and Frith, 2008; Apperly and Butterfill, 2009). To test the respective roles of specific abilities in either of these processes we administered 15 experimental procedures to a large sample of 343 participants, testing ability in face recognition and holistic perception, language, and reasoning. ToM was measured by a set of tasks requiring ability to track and to infer complex emotional and mental states of others from faces, eyes, spoken language, and prosody. We used structural equation modeling to test the relative strengths of a social-perceptual (face processing related) and reflexive-cognitive (language and reasoning related) path in predicting ToM ability. The two paths accounted for 58% of ToM variance, thus validating a general two-systems framework. Testing specific predictor paths revealed language and face recognition as strong and significant predictors of ToM. For reasoning, there were neither direct nor mediated effects, albeit reasoning was strongly associated with language. Holistic face perception also failed to show a direct link with ToM ability, while there was a mediated effect via face recognition. These results highlight the respective roles of face recognition and language for the social brain, and contribute closer empirical specification of the general two-systems account.

Minimal coherence among varied theory of mind measures in childhood and adulthood

“…Similarly, adults who are skilled at inferring complex emotional and mental states from pictures of the eyes show similar inferential skills when presented with pictures of the whole face and with spoken language (Meinhardt-Injac et al, 2018).…”

An investigation of affective theory of mind ability and its relation to neuropsychological functions in Alzheimer's disease

“…Castelli et al , 2011; Synn et al , 2018). In addition, face processing, an essential social perceptual ability, could be a crucial function for ToM, especially in RMET (Meinhardt‐Injac, Daum, Meinhardt & Persike, 2018). We, therefore, focused on the relationship of executive functions, episodic memory, and face recognition with affective ToM along AD continuum.…”

Familiarity with children improves the ability to recognize children’s mental states: an fMRI study using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task and the Nencki Children Eyes Test

“…The phenomena of being able to better remember the faces of members of our own age and own race groups have been well documented [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] . These phenomena are described as own-age bias and own-race bias, respectively.…”

“…This effect can be explained as perceptual expertise acquired by daily contact with children or increased motivation to attend to children faces 24 . Remembering faces was shown to be a predictor of TOM abilities, measured by understanding mental states from the eye region, voice and videos 21 . Therefore, adults who work with children could potentially become experts in understanding the mental states of children.…”

“…An experimental task widely used to measure socio-perceptual component of TOM is the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RMET) 18,19 . There is also a debate on whether RMET engages affective, cognitive or both of these TOM components [18][19][20][21] . RMET consists of pictures of the eye region of Caucasian adults paired with adjectives describing mental states (such as playful, amused, and interested).…”