Mental State Attribution Research Articles

The role of cross-species relative brain size variation and time since domestication in explaining human empathy towards domesticated mammals

Although multiple publications have addressed the nexus between individual differences and attitudes towards nonhuman animals, fewer studies have discussed the rise of human-animal interactions, in particular with domesticated mammals, through an evolutionary lens. Two evolutionary hypotheses, the Symbiotic and Neurocognitive hypothesis, provide complementary predictions regarding the evolution of these cognitive and emotional mechanisms. According to the Symbiotic hypothesis, the longer the time humans have had to interact symbiotically with domesticated the animals, the greater their empathy towards them. Alternatively, the Neurocognitive hypothesis argues that human empathy directed at animals increases in response to the neural and cognitive complexity of nonhuman animals. To test these hypotheses, the present study reported questionnaire data from 322 Southwestern university students. These psychometric instruments measured the participants' levels of cognitive empathy (the attribution of mental states to animals), emotional empathy (emotional concern about animals), and harm avoidance (reluctance to mistreat animals) when rating 13 domesticated mammals. The species' times since domestication and relative brain sizes were then used as predictors of cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and harm avoidance. The results of Linear Mixed and Hierarchical General Linear Cascade Models found empirical support for the Symbiotic and Neurocognitive hypotheses.

Collaborative Autonomy: Human–Robot Interaction to the Test of Intelligent Help

A big challenge in human–robot interaction (HRI) is the design of autonomous robots that collaborate effectively with humans, exposing behaviors similar to those exhibited by humans when they interact with each other. Indeed, robots are part of daily life in multiple environments (i.e., cultural heritage sites, hospitals, offices, touristic scenarios and so on). In these contexts, robots have to coexist and interact with a wide spectrum of users not necessarily able or willing to adapt their interaction level to the kind requested by a machine: the users need to deal with artificial systems whose behaviors must be adapted as much as possible to the goals/needs of the users themselves, or more in general, to their mental states (beliefs, goals, plans and so on). In this paper, we introduce a cognitive architecture for adaptive and transparent human–robot interaction. The architecture allows a social robot to dynamically adjust its level of collaborative autonomy by restricting or expanding a delegated task on the basis of several context factors such as the mental states attributed to the human users involved in the interaction. This collaboration has to be based on different cognitive capabilities of the robot, i.e., the ability to build a user’s profile, to have a Theory of Mind of the user in terms of mental states attribution, to build a complex model of the context, intended both as a set of physical constraints and constraints due to the presence of other agents, with their own mental states. Based on the defined cognitive architecture and on the model of task delegation theorized by Castelfranchi and Falcone, the robot’s behavior is explainable by considering the abilities to attribute specific mental states to the user, the context in which it operates and its attitudes in adapting the level of autonomy to the user’s mental states and the context itself. The architecture has been implemented by exploiting the well known agent-oriented programming framework Jason. We provide the results of an HRI pilot study in which we recruited 26 real participants that have interacted with the humanoid robot Nao, widely used in HRI scenarios. The robot played the role of a museum assistant with the main goal to provide the user the most suitable museum exhibition to visit.

Autism Traits and Cognitive Performance: Mediating Roles of Sleep Disturbance, Anxiety and Depression

Theories about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have addressed cognitive deficits however few have examined how comorbid diagnoses, including sleep disturbance, anxiety and depression contribute to the underlying deficits. We investigated potential mediations of common ASD comorbidities in the relationship between sub-clinical autism traits and cognitive performance using an international community sample. Cognitive tasks assessed working memory [executive functioning (EF) theory], mental state attribution [theory of mind (ToM)], and global/local visual processing [weak central coherence (WCC) theory]. Structural equation modelling (SEM) demonstrated sleep disturbance and anxiety mediated the relationship of autism traits on measures of EF, but not WCC and ToM. This suggests that treating the symptoms of sleep disturbance and anxiety may lead to improvements in working memory.

Knowing Other Minds: A Scorekeeping Model

The prepositional ‘in’ and possessive pronouns, e.g., ‘my’ and ‘mine,’ in the context of attributions of mental states, such as “in my mind” or “in your mind,” threaten to confuse attempts to account for knowledge of other minds. This paper distinguishes proper from improper uses of such expressions. I will argue that proper use of the prepositional ‘in’ and possessive pronouns in the context of mental state attributions presupposes capacities to properly track and attribute what are really, in a sense to be specified, intersubjectively articulated and inferentially interrelated normative statuses. What we call “mental states” or “minds,” in as far as primarily cognitive states such as beliefs are concerned, are intersubjectively constituted. As opposed to being inner and private, something we must learn to intersubjectively discover, minds and mental states are intersubjectively articulated and we learn to attribute them as inner and private. A scorekeeping-model is used to illustrate how the privacy of mind presupposes intersubjectivity. Using that model, I argue that the traditional problem of knowing other minds can be re-framed as a problem of learning how to pursue intersubjective practices of acknowledging, attributing and undertaking mental states.

Mental State Attribution to Robots: A Systematic Review of Conceptions, Methods, and Findings

The topic of mental state attribution to robots has been approached by researchers from a variety of disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and philosophy. As a consequence, the empirical studies that have been conducted so far exhibit considerable diversity in terms of how the phenomenon is described and how it is approached from a theoretical and methodological standpoint. This literature review addresses the need for a shared scientific understanding of mental state attribution to robots by systematically and comprehensively collating conceptions, methods, and findings from 155 empirical studies across multiple disciplines. The findings of the review include that: (1) the terminology used to describe mental state attribution to robots is diverse but largely homogenous in usage; (2) the tendency to attribute mental states to robots is determined by factors such as the age and motivation of the human as well as the behavior, appearance, and identity of the robot; (3) there is acomputer < robot < humanpattern in the tendency to attribute mental states that appears to be moderated by the presence of socially interactive behavior; (4) there are conflicting findings in the empirical literature that stem from different sources of evidence, including self-report and non-verbal behavioral or neurological data. The review contributes toward more cumulative research on the topic and opens up for a transdisciplinary discussion about the nature of the phenomenon and what types of research methods are appropriate for investigation.

Impaired sequence generation: a preliminary comparison between high functioning autistic and neurotypical adults.

Earlier research demonstrated robust cerebellar involvement in sequencing, including high-level social information sequencing that requires mental state attributions, termed mentalizing. Earlier research also found cerebellar deficiencies in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) which are characterized by social difficulties. However, studies on high-level social sequencing functionality by persons with ASD are almost non-existent. In this study, we, therefore, perform a comparison between behavioral performances of high-functioning ASD and neurotypical participants on the Picture and Verbal Sequencing Tasks. In these tasks, participants are requested to put separate events (depicted in cartoon-like pictures or behavioral sentences, respectively) in their correct chronological order. To do so, some of these events require understanding of high-level social beliefs, of social routines (i.e., scripts), or nonsocial mechanical functionality. As expected, on the Picture Sequencing task, we observed longer response times for persons with ASD (in comparison with neurotypical controls) when ordering sequences requiring an understanding of social beliefs and social scripts, but not when ordering nonsocial mechanical events. This confirms our hypotheses that social sequence processing is impaired in ASD. The verbal version of this task did not reveal differences between groups. Our results are the first step toward new theoretical insights for social impairments of persons with ASD. They highlight the importance of taking into account sequence processing, and indirectly the cerebellum when investigating ASD difficulties.

Theory of Mind in migraine and medication-overuse headache: A cross-sectional study.

BackgroundTheory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to predict and anticipate others' behaviors through the mental state attribution process. This study aims to investigate the ToM in patients with medication-overuse headache (MOH) and episodic migraine (EM) and to compare it with healthy controls (HC).MethodsThis study enrolled patients with MOH, patients with EM, and HC. ToM was assessed through the Theory of Mind Assessment Scale (ThOMAS), which includes four subscales: Scale A, I-Me, Scale B, Other-Self, Scale C, I-Other, and Scale D, Other-Me, through the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RMET), which measures complex emotion recognition, and through the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), which measures alexithymia. Concomitant psychiatric disturbances were evaluated through the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, and the Dissociative Experiences Scale-II.ResultsThe study involved 21 patients with EM, 22 patients with MOH, and 18 HC. In all the four subscales of the ThOMAS, there was a significant difference between HC, EM, and MOH patients: Scale A (p = 0.009), Scale B (p = 0.004), Scale C (p = 0.039), and Scale D (p = 0.008). In the RMET, MOH patients had worse performances than EM patients and HC (p = 0.039). MOH group exhibited higher levels of alexithymia when compared to the HC (p = 0.033) and higher levels of anxiety than HC (p = 0.001).ConclusionMOH patients showed a subtle psychopathological pattern characterized by impaired social adaptation.

Human-Animal Similarity and the Imageability of Mental State Concepts for Mentalizing Animals

AbstractThe attribution of mental states (MS) to other species typically follows ascala naturaepattern. However, “simple” mental states, including emotions, sensing, and feelings are attributed to a wider range of animals as compared to the so-called “higher” cognitive abilities. We propose that such attributions are based on the perceptual quality (i.e.imageability) of mental representations related toMSconcepts. We hypothesized that the attribution of highly imaginableMSis more dependent on the familiarity of participants with animals when compared to the attribution ofMSlow in imageability. In addition, we also assessed how animal agreeableness, familiarity with animals, and the type of human-animal interaction related to the judged similarity of animals to humans. Sixty-one participants (19 females, 42 males) with a rural (n = 20) and urban (n = 41) background rated twenty-six wild and domestic animals for their perceived similarity with humans and ability to experience a set ofMS: (1) Highly imageableMS: joy, anger, and fear, and (2)MSlow in imageability: capacity to plan and deceive. Results show that more agreeable and familiar animals were considered more human-like. Primates, followed by carnivores, suines, ungulates, and rodents were rated more human-like than xenarthrans, birds, arthropods, and reptiles. HigherMSratings were given to more similar animals and more so if theMSattributed were high in imageability. Familiarity with animals was only relevant for the attribution of theMShigh in imageability.

Development and validation of the Mental-Physical Verb Norms (MPVN): A text analysis measure of mental state attribution.

Attribution of mental states to self and others, i.e., mentalizing, is central to human life. Current measures are lacking in the ability to directly gauge the extent to which individuals engage in spontaneous mentalizing. Focusing on natural language use as an expression of inner psychological processes, we developed the Mental-Physical Verb Norms (MPVN). These norms are participant-derived ratings of the extent to which common verbs reflect mental (vs physical) activities and occurrences, covering a majority of verbs appearing in a given English text. Content validity was assessed against existing expert-compiled dictionaries of mental states and cognitive processes, as well as against normative ratings of verb concreteness. Criterion Validity was assessed through natural text analysis of both experimental data, and natural language use in a real-world online setting. Finally, incremental validity was assessed through a classification analysis. Results indicate the unique contribution of the MPVN ratings as a measure of the degree to which individuals adopt the intentional stance in describing targets, by describing both self and others in mental, opposite physical, terms. We discuss potential uses for future research across various psychological and neurocognitive disciplines, as well as theoretical implications regarding the use of mentalizing language within spontaneous contexts.

Study development and protocol for a cohort study examining the impact of baseline social cognition on response to treatment for people living with post-traumatic stress disorder

ABSTRACT Background: Social cognitive impairments, specifically in facial emotion processing and mental state attribution, are common in post-traumatic stress disorder. However few studies so far have examined whether social cognitive ability impacts on PTSD recovery. Objective: To examine whether baseline social cognitive abilities are associated with treatment outcomes following trauma-focused therapy for PTSD. Method: This is a cohort study that will relate treatment outcomes post-discharge to baseline measures of social cognition (five tasks: Emotion Odd-One-Out Task (Oddity), Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RMET), Social Shapes Test (SST), Spontaneous Theory of Mind Protocol (STOMP), and Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ-8)) in people starting a course of psychological therapy for PTSD (target N = 60). The primary outcome will be pre- to post-treatment change in PTSD symptom severity (assessed using the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5). Secondary outcomes include functional impairment (assessed using the Work and Social Adjustment Scale), drop-out rate, and analyses differentiating participants with DSM-5 PTSD and ICD-11 PTSD and CPTSD. Regression models will be used to examine associations between baseline social cognitive performance and outcome measures while adjusting for potential confounders. Two pilot studies informed the development of our study protocol. The first involved qualitative analysis of interviews with nine participants with lived experience of mental health problems to inform our research questions and study protocol. The second involved trialling social cognitive tasks on 20 non-clinical participants to refine our test battery. Discussion: This study will address a gap in the literature about whether abilities in social cognition in people living with PTSD are associated with treatment-related recovery. HIGHLIGHTS Impairments in social cognition are recognised in people with PTSD. Few studies have examined whether social cognitive ability is associated with recovery from PTSD. We present a study protocol, developed after pilot testing, to address this question.

Synchrony During Online Encounters Affects Social Affiliation and Theory of Mind but Not Empathy.

Moving together in time affects human social affiliation and cognition. However, it is unclear whether these effects hold for on-line video meetings and whether they extend to empathy (understanding or sharing others' emotions) and theory of mind (ToM; attribution of mental states to others). 126 young adult participants met through online video in unacquainted pairs. Participants either performed 3 min of synchronous arm movements paced by sounds (n = 40), asynchronous movements (n = 46) or a small talk condition (n = 40). In a subsequent empathy task, participants engaged in a conversation. A video recording of this conversation was played back, and each participant rated, at predetermined time points, how they felt and how they thought their partner felt. From this we calculated empathic accuracy (accuracy of the estimation of the other's emotions) and emotional congruence (emotion sharing). ToM was measured by showing videos of geometrical shapes interacting and asking the participants to describe what happened, measuring the amount of intentionality. We found that participants in the synchrony condition rated feeling greater closeness and similarity to their partners relative to the asynchronous condition. Further, participants in the synchrony group tended to ascribe more intentionality to the abstract shapes than participants in asynchrony condition, suggesting greater ToM. Synchrony and asynchrony groups did not reliably differ in empathic accuracy nor emotional congruence. These results suggest that moving in synchrony has effects on social affiliation measures even in online encounters. These effects extend to ToM tendencies but not empathic accuracy or emotion sharing. These results highlight the potential of synchronous movement in online encounters to affect a subset of social cognition and affiliation measures.

Human-robot interaction through adjustable social autonomy

Autonomy is crucial in cooperation. The complexity of HRI scenarios requires autonomous robots able to exploit their superhuman computations (based on DNN, Machine Learning techniques and Big Data) in a trustworthy way. Trustworthiness is not only a matter of accuracy, privacy or security, but it is becoming more and more a matter of adaptation to humans agency. As claimed by Falcone and Castelfranchi, autonomy means the possibility of dislaying or providing an unexpected behavior (including refusal) that departs from a requested (agreed upon or not) behavior. In this sense, the autonomy to decide how to adopt a task delegated by the user, with respect to her/his own real needs and goals, distinguishes intelligent and trustworthy robots from highly performing robots. This kind of smart help can be provided only by cognitive robots able to represent and ascribe mental states (beliefs, goals, intentions, desires etc.) to their interlocutors. The mental states attribution can be the result of complex reasoning mechanisms or can be fast and automatic, based on scripts, roles, categories or stereotypes typically exploited by humans every time they interact in everyday life. In all these cases, robots that build and use cognitive models of humans (that have a Theory of Mind of their interlocutors), have to operate also a meta-evaluation of their own predictive skills to build those models. Robots have to be endowed with the capability to self-trust their skills to interpret the interlocutors and the context, for producing smart and effective decisions towards humans. After exploring the main concepts that make collaboration between humans and robots trustworthy and effective, we present the first of a series of experiments draw for testing different aspects of a designed cognitive architecture for trustworthy HRI. This architecture, based on consolidated theoretical principles (theory of social adjustable autonomy, theory of mind, theory of trust) has the main goal to build cognitive robots that provide smart, trustworthy collaboration, every time a human requires their help. In particular, the experiment has been designed in order to demonstrate how the robot’s capability to learn its own level of self-trust on its predictive abilities in perceiving the user and building a model of her/him, allows it to establish a trustworthy collaboration and to maintain a high level of user’s satisfaction, with respect to the robot’s performance, also when these abilities progressively degrade.

Coordinating Behaviors: Is social interaction scripted?

AbstractSome philosophical and psychological approaches to social interaction posit a powerful explanatory tool for explaining how we navigate social situations: scripts. Scripts tell people how to interact in different situational and cultural contexts depending on social roles such as gender. A script theory of social interaction puts emphasis on understanding the world as normatively structured. Social structures place demands, roles, and ways to behave in the social world upon us, which, in turn, guide the ways we interact with one another and the ways we coordinate our behaviors. In this paper, I explore the phenomenon of coordinated behaviors in social interactions in humans. I argue that looking closely at everyday interactions, for which social coordination is central, strongly points to a fundamental role of scripts for social cognition and interaction. In order to explain some social interactions, like those based on social coordination, we do not need to recourse to mental state attribution. Rather, I argue, scripts are a powerful resource for explaining social interaction and especially coordinated behaviors. Scripts have been neglected in standard approaches to social cognition but are (re‐)gaining attention via the normative turn in social cognition.

Judging intentionality in the context of ambiguous actions among autistic adults

BackgroundDiscerning intentional from unintentional actions is a key aspect of social cognition. Mental state attribution tasks show that autistic people are less accurate than neurotypicals in attributing an agent’s intention when there is clearly a right answer. Little is known about how autistic people judge the intentionality of ambiguous actions (i.e., actions that are neither clearly intentional nor clearly unintentional). AimsThis study sought to find out whether autistic individuals differ in their interpretation of ambiguous action compared to neurotypical controls. Methods and procedures20 autistic and 20 neurotypical adults completed an ambiguous action and theory of mind task. Autistic traits, verbal reasoning and non-verbal perceptual reasoning ability were measured. Outcomes and resultsResults show that intentionality endorsement scores for ambiguous but prototypically accidental actions were higher in autistic participants than controls. Theory of Mind (ToM) scores did not correlate with intentionality endorsement scores in either group therefore group differences could not be explained by ToM ability. Conclusion and implicationsAutistic participants had a tendency to over-attribute intention compared to neurotypicals, which could not be explained by ToM ability. Studying ambiguous action is important with respect to ecological validity, given that we often face ambiguous actions during social encounters.

Animals in Sociomaterial Processes: An Alternative to Inferential Processes in Animals’ Heads

Mindreading and behaviour-reading depict social cognition as an inferential process, taking place inside the individual. This process consists either of mental state ascription (mindreading) or application of general rules (behaviour-reading). In this paper, I develop an alternative to both views, which focuses not on the processes in the animal’s head, but on the sociomaterial processes that animals are in and that organize their ongoing activities. Instead of an individual trying to predict the behaviour of another individual based on inferential abilities, the animal is responsive to affordances and how they are nested within the sociomaterial processes that make up the environment. I argue that this depiction of animal social cognition is preferable, because it is allows us to understand the social abilities of nonhuman animals free from our current understanding of human social cognition.

Successful mentalizing in schizophrenia is associated with specific recruitment of ventromedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus

IntroductionPatients with schizophrenia have difficulties in cognitive and affective mentalizing which is manifested by excessive (‘overmentalizing’) or defective (‘undermentalizing’) attribution of mental states. As most of the tests does not differentiate between ‘overmentalizing’ and ‘undermentalizing’, it is not yet clear how are these deficits reflected in mentalizing network in schizophrenia.ObjectivesInvestigate how is cognitive and affective ‘overmentalizing’ and ‘undermentalizing’ reflected in mentalizing network in schizophrenia.MethodsWe recruited 30 schizophrenia patients and 30 healthy controls who underwent fMRI session while they completed ‘Social situations assessment task’ consisting of 90 stories with 30 questions on affective, 30 on cognitive mental states and 30 control memory questions and 4 possible answers: no mentalizing, undermentalizing, appropriate mentalizing, overmentalizng (for control condition 1 correct and 3 incorrect).ResultsOn a behavioral level, we found increased no mentalizing and undermentalizing and decreased mentalizing in patients, but no difference in overmentalizing between groups. For fMRI results, patients showed lesser recruitment of dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and temporal poles (with right superior temporal sulcus) only during appropriate mentalizing in both affective and cognitive conditions. However, ventromedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus showed increased pattern of activation across all mentalizing levels in healthy controls compared to schizophrenia, but suppressed activation in appropriate cognitive mentalizing corresponding to the level of a schizophrenia group.ConclusionsSchizophrenia patients show different pattern of mentalizing compared to healthy control that can be associated with specific activity mentalizing brain network.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Deficits in Emotion Recognition and Theory of Mind in Parkinson's Disease Patients With and Without Cognitive Impairments.

BackgroundEmotion recognition and social deficits have been previously reported in Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, the extent of these impairments is still unclear and social cognition is excluded from the cognitive domains considered in the current criteria for PD mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This study aims to analyze emotion recognition, affective and cognitive theory of mind in early PD patients classified according to Level II MCI criteria, and to evaluate the prevalence of socio-cognitive deficits in this sample.MethodsWe enrolled 45 participants with PD, classified as cognitively unimpaired (CU; n = 32) or MCI (n = 13) based on a standard neuropsychological assessment. Social cognitive skills were evaluated through validated tests for emotion recognition (i.e., Ekman 60-faces test, Ek60 Test) and mental states attribution (Story-based Empathy Task, SET) and compared to a group of 45 healthy controls (HC). Between-group differences in social tasks were performed, as well as correlation analyses to assess the relationship between social, cognitive, and clinical variables. Finally, the number of patients with social cognitive impairments in both MCI and CU subgroups was computed based on Italian normative data.ResultsStatistical comparison revealed significant differences among groups in the Ek60 test, with MCI obtaining significantly lower scores than HC and CU, especially for negative emotions. Significant differences were detected also in the SET, with lower performance in emotion and intention attribution for both PD groups compared to HC. A significant correlation emerged between the Ek60 test and emotion attribution. Nine patients showed poor performance at social tasks, five of them being classified as PD-CU.DiscussionParkinson’s disease cognitive profile was characterized by emotion recognition and attribution deficits. These results, as well as the detection of CU patients with isolated socio-cognitive impairments, underline the importance of assessing social cognition in PD as a possible early marker of cognitive decline.

Cognitive and Emotional Determinants of Automatic Perspective Taking in Healthy Adults.

Previous studies using the dot-perspective task postulated that people automatically take into account others' perspective even when it prevents them from achieving their own goals. This human ability may be of key importance for the ascription of mental states and social interactions. The cognitive and emotional determinants of automatic perspective taking (APT) is still matter of debate. To address this issue, we examined the performance in the Samson et al. APT task in 91 healthy adults who underwent a detailed neuropsychological testing including assessment of their general intelligence (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, WAIS), attention and impulsivity (Conners' Continuous Performance Test-II, CPT-II), alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale, TAS), and measures of affective empathy and explicit theory of mind (Geneva Social Cognition Scale, GeSoCS, and mini-Social cognition and Emotional Assessment, mini-SEA). Univariate and multiple linear regression models (adjusted for age, gender, and education) were used to explore the association between mean reaction times (respectively, mean number of errors) in the APT task, and the CPT-II parameters, WAIS global score (as well as subscale scores), TAS, and GeSoCS and mini-SEA scores. Only the CPT-II parameters were significantly associated with the mean reaction times. Increased omissions, commissions, and detectability as well as hit reaction time standard error in CPT-II were all related to worse performances both in Self and Other conditions. The mean number of errors was negatively associated with the GeSoCS score. Among the variables studied, only CPT-II parameters had a significant impact on egocentric and altercentric interference. Neither global intelligence nor alexithymia have an effect on dot-perspective task performance. The present findings suggest that people with lower attentional resources and increased impulsivity display worse performances in the APT task and are less responsive to both egocentric and altercentric interference.

Enactive-Dynamic Social Cognition and Active Inference.

This aim of this paper is two-fold: it critically analyses and rejects accounts blending active inference as theory of mind and enactivism; and it advances an enactivist-dynamic understanding of social cognition that is compatible with active inference. While some social cognition theories seemingly take an enactive perspective on social cognition, they explain it as the attribution of mental states to other people, by assuming representational structures, in line with the classic Theory of Mind (ToM). Holding both enactivism and ToM, we argue, entails contradiction and confusion due to two ToM assumptions widely known to be rejected by enactivism: that (1) social cognition reduces to mental representation and (2) social cognition is a hardwired contentful ‘toolkit’ or ‘starter pack’ that fuels the model-like theorising supposed in (1). The paper offers a positive alternative, one that avoids contradictions or confusion. After rejecting ToM-inspired theories of social cognition and clarifying the profile of social cognition under enactivism, that is without assumptions (1) and (2), the last section advances an enactivist-dynamic model of cognition as dynamic, real-time, fluid, contextual social action, where we use the formalisms of dynamical systems theory to explain the origins of socio-cognitive novelty in developmental change and active inference as a tool to demonstrate social understanding as generalised synchronisation.

Theory of mind tested by implicit false belief: a simple and full-fledged mental state attribution.

About 40 years have passed since 'theory of mind (ToM)' research started. The false-belief test is used as a litmus test for ToM ability. The implicit false-belief test has renewed views of ToM in several disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. Many important questions have been considered via the paradigm of implicit false belief. We recently addressed the phylogenetic and physiological aspects of ToM using a version of this paradigm combined with the chemogenetic technique on Old World monkeys. We sought to create animal models for autism that exhibit behavioral phenotypes similar to human symptoms. The simultaneous manipulation of neural circuits and assessments of changes in phenotypes can help identify the causal neural substrate of ToM.