Questions

Questions

Luisa Andreuccioli -
Number of replies: 1

  • In an infant cognition class, we discussed a study in which it was shown that 14-month-olds show an N400 effect when an object label is congruent with the reality of what the object is, but incongruent with the others' perspective. Do you take this as evidence of theory of mind? More in general my question is the following: I know that there have been various studies ran with young infants to find what is the earliest age at which they show ToM abilities. Though I am not super familiar with the literature and with the various kinds of designs, I wonder whether you believe that some of the designs used do not actually capture ToM abilities? In your opinion, is there a way to distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' tests of ToM (i.e. those that actually do capture this ability and those that don't)?

  • In the Lin et al. (2010) task- is it possible that the errors were partially due to the nature of the stimuli (eg. the stimuli being a graphic illustration vs a real life example)? Intuitively, I was thinking that if this were in person it would be harder to make mistakes… For example, the drawing of the black vase the background is hardly distinguishable from the vase and if you miss that detail then it's easy to make a mistake. Or are these errors on ToM reasoning with adults generally well-attested? 

  • Would it possible to elaborate a little on the limits of the system 1 implicit ? It is mentioned it is insensitive to aspectuality. Could you give concrete examples of what this means? (Is this similar to the ‘awareness relations’ proposed by Santos in primates? If not, how is it different?)

  • In the studies looking at which brain networks might be involved in explicit vs. Implicit TOM, how do we know that subjects in the implicit case were actually representing these relations if there was no element meant to double check their understanding? Also were these studies conducted with adults or children? If they were conducted with adults, might there be qualitative differences in how such ToM-related computations are represented in children vs. adults? 

In reply to Luisa Andreuccioli

Re: Questions

Luisa Andreuccioli -
A few additional questions:

- Does involvement of the same brain regions in implicit versus explicit tasks necessarily excludes the two systems hypothesis from a theoretical point of view? E.g. Is it not possible that same brain network is involved but that there is still a way to explain the recruitment of an implicit vs explicit system depending on the context one is faced with?

- I didn’t fully understand the Apperly 2006 findings. You mentioned that the authors conclude that explicit belief tracking is more effortful but what exactly was the difference between that condition and the incidental false belief? Were subjects in the explicit condition told what they were going to be asked / what to focus on from the beginning?

- Do you believe that the fact that you find a P300 signal on both implicit and explicit version of the task should be taken as evidence against the existence of Two Systems?