Abstract
Theory of mind plays a fundamental role in human social interactions. People generally better understand the mental states of members of their own race, a predisposition called the own-race bias, which can be significantly reduced by experience. It is unknown whether the ability to understand mental states can be similarly influenced by own-age bias, whether this bias can be reduced by experience and, finally, what the neuronal correlates of this processes are. We evaluate whether adults working with children (WC) have an advantage over adults not working with children (NWC) in understanding the mental states of youngsters. Participants performed fMRI tasks with Adult Mind (AM) and Child Mind (CM) conditions based on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test and a newly developed Nencki Children Eyes test. WC had better accuracy in the CM condition than NWC. In NWC, own-age bias was associated with higher activation in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in AM than in CM. This effect was not observed in the WC group, which showed higher activation in the pSTS and inferior frontal gyri in CM than in AM. Therefore, activation in these regions is required for the improvement in recognition of children’s mental states caused by experience.
Highlights
Humans are social beings, and the ability to understand the mental states of others is crucial to everyday life and to adequately function in modern society, especially regarding social interactions
Due to experience, ward n urses[16] and teachers[17] can become better at remembering the faces of children than control groups can. It is currently unknown whether ownage bias affects the ability to understand mental states and, if so, whether this bias can be reduced by experience with other age groups
Post hoc tests showed that Adult Mind (AM) was more difficult than Adult Sex (AS) (T = − 14.18, p < 0.001), AM was more difficult than Child Mind (CM) (T = − 4.9, p < 0.001), and AS was less difficult than Child Sex (CS) (T = 7.5, p < 0.001)
Summary
The ability to understand the mental states of others is crucial to everyday life and to adequately function in modern society, especially regarding social interactions. TOM can be divided into the socio-perceptual component, referring to decoding or detecting other’s mental states based on perceptual information (e.g. a photograph of the eye region) and the socio-cognitive component allowing to infer about others’ intentions or beliefs based on their behaviour and one’s knowledge about the w orld[4,5]. Due to experience, ward n urses[16] and teachers[17] can become better at remembering the faces of children than control groups can It is currently unknown whether ownage bias affects the ability to understand mental states and, if so, whether this bias can be reduced by experience with other age groups. These results indicate the occurrence of the own-race bias in TOM processes and that experience with other cultures can reduce this bias and improve the understanding of mental states of people from other cultural groups
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