Using Fiction to Assess Mental State Understanding: A New Task for Assessing Theory of Mind in Adults

David Dodell-Feder,Joseph P Coulson,Christine I Hooker,Sarah Hope Lincoln,Liane Young

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081279

Abstract

Social functioning depends on the ability to attribute and reason about the mental states of others – an ability known as theory of mind (ToM). Research in this field is limited by the use of tasks in which ceiling effects are ubiquitous, rendering them insensitive to individual differences in ToM ability and instances of subtle ToM impairment. Here, we present data from a new ToM task – the Short Story Task (SST) - intended to improve upon many aspects of existing ToM measures. More specifically, the SST was designed to: (a) assess the full range of individual differences in ToM ability without suffering from ceiling effects; (b) incorporate a range of mental states of differing complexity, including epistemic states, affective states, and intentions to be inferred from a first- and second-order level; (c) use ToM stimuli representative of real-world social interactions; (d) require participants to utilize social context when making mental state inferences; (e) exhibit adequate psychometric properties; and (f) be quick and easy to administer and score. In the task, participants read a short story and were asked questions that assessed explicit mental state reasoning, spontaneous mental state inference, and comprehension of the non-mental aspects of the story. Responses were scored according to a rubric that assigned greater points for accurate mental state attributions that included multiple characters’ mental states. Results demonstrate that the SST is sensitive to variation in ToM ability, can be accurately scored by multiple raters, and exhibits concurrent validity with other social cognitive tasks. The results support the effectiveness of this new measure of ToM in the study of social cognition. The findings are also consistent with studies demonstrating significant relationships among narrative transportation, ToM, and the reading of fiction. Together, the data indicate that reading fiction may be an avenue for improving ToM ability.

Highlights

Navigation of the social world depends on one’s ability to make inferences about the mental life of others
We report findings from the Short Story Task (SST), a new measure of theory of mind (ToM) ability for adults. This task was designed to improve upon limitations inherent in existing ToM tasks
The task stimulus was representative of a real-world, dynamically unfolding, complicated social scenario that required the application of social knowledge, and participants answered questions that assessed both explicit mental state reasoning and spontaneous mental state inference

Summary

Introduction

Navigation of the social world depends on one’s ability to make inferences about the mental life of others. The importance of the mechanism that allows for mental state attribution, known as theory of mind (ToM), is perhaps best illustrated by cases in which ToM is impaired, as in schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders [1,2,3]. In both of these disorders, ToM impairment carries functional and clinical significance in that the extent of ToM impairment is associated with the extent of dysfunction in social behavior [4,5,6]. In addition to its obvious clinical relevance, ToM underlies myriad social processes including compassion, sympathy, and empathy [13,14,15], moral judgment [16,17,18,19,20,21], negotiation [22], and marital/ romantic relationship adjustment [23,24], among others

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