The effect of fantastical elements on preschoolers' false belief task performance.

Exploring theory of mind abilities in Lebanese chronic patients with schizophrenia: A cross-sectional study.

The instability of sensitivity to false beliefs: How and why

ABSTRACT The current research in two studies conducted among Greek (Study 1, n = 425) and Spanish (Study 2, n = 172) participants tested a model integrating the D-factor of personality, religiosity, political ideology, and conservative values as correlates of child sexual abuse-related myths. This study’s results provide evidence of the importance of individual disposition and contextual beliefs as regards the endorsement of false beliefs and myths related to child sexual abuse. By analyzing the factors through which individuals come to endorse child sexual abuse-related myths, we can better contribute to efforts aimed at promoting social justice and victim support.

Studying Theory of Mind in non-verbal populations requires designing tasks that address the distinction between responding based on directly perceivable cues and additionally inferring others' mental states. We designed and pre-registered an auditory version of a non-verbal change-of-location task, to investigate whether dogs are sensitive to a human communicator's mental states about the location of food. With control conditions we ruled out alternative cognitive processes such as associative learning. Dogs (N = 240) could witness that food was hidden first in one opaque bucket (A) and then relocated to a second opaque bucket (B) by an experimenter. Before being allowed to retrieve the food from one of the buckets, dogs received a misleading suggestion (A) from the communicator, who could not see the scene. In all conditions, the communicator could hear food being hidden in A, due to the presence of bells on the lid of this bucket. We manipulated whether she could also hear that food was removed from A and relocated to B (true belief) or not (silent bells on B, leading to her false belief). Importantly, in both conditions the communicator behaved identically (present in the room, suggesting A). Dogs' responses were not statistically different from those of a previous study using a similar change-of-location task in the visual domain (Lonardo et al.288(1955),2021, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0906). Dogs' choices in the present study, however, did not differ significantly across conditions, suggesting that any auditory perspective-taking ability they might possess did not have a sufficiently large effect to be detected in this study.

Although large language models (LLMs) have been observed to perform at a human level in theory of mind tasks, deeper examinations and systematic testing of their performance in these domains is needed. Primitive decomposition representations show promise for building robotic systems with greater abilities for in-depth natural language understanding and generation. In this work we explore representations of theory of mind which are combinations of conceptual primitives, focusing on simulations of a Sally-Anne false-belief test. We demonstrate how primitive decompositions into the conceptual building blocks of image schemas and conceptual dependency can represent the attribution of false beliefs to intelligent agents. The exploration has consequences for generating controlled and linguistically varied tests posed in natural language as challenge problems for large language models and for cognitive representations more broadly.

ABSTRACT In the valence contingency learning (VCL) task, participants evaluate target words which are preceded by nonwords, which are predictive for positive/negative evaluation responses. This produces robust contingency learning (CL) effects, reflected in faster and more accurate performance for highly contingent nonword-valence pairings. Previous findings indicate that controlling for episodic retrieval of transient stimulus-response episodes reduces CL effects but does not eliminate them, as a residual CL effect remains. These residual CL effects are best explained by propositional learning. To substantiate this, the present study manipulated participants beliefs about contingencies in the VCL task. Participants received either true, false or no instructions regarding the actual nonword-valence contingencies. Effects of contingency learning and evaluative conditioning (EC) for nonwords were assessed. Contingency beliefs modulated contingency learning, as true instructions boosted residual CL effects; false instructions reduced residual CL effects, relative to the no instruction condition. Exploratory analyses revealed a modulatory influence of contingency beliefs on EC effects, which varied solely as a function of (remembered) contingency instruction and were unaffected by experienced contingencies. The present study conceptually replicates findings from colour-word contingency learning in the realm of evaluative learning. Implications for theories on processes underlying contingency learning and evaluative conditioning are discussed.

Abstract The development of intelligent optimization methods has become a highly active research area in recent decades. This paper introduces a philosophy-inspired optimization algorithm called the Philosophical Proposition Optimizer (ΦPO), which models knowledge acquisition based on philosophical propositions in epistemology. In the proposed philosophical model, three developmental states for philosophical propositions, Justified True Belief (JTB), Possibly False Belief (PFB), and Unjustified True Belief (UTB), are iteratively refined using three specialized operators: Providing Justification (PJ), Raising Metaphysical Skepticism (RMS), and Raising Epistemic Skepticism (RES). To evaluate the performance of ΦPO on challenging optimization problems, it is applied to the single-objective bound-constrained benchmark problems of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2014 and 2024 (CEC 2014 and 2024), as well as to benchmark engineering problems. The performance of ΦPO is compared against five categories of algorithms: (1) widely used classical methods, (2) established post-2019 methods, (3) advanced PSO- and DE-based methods, (4) winners of CEC competitions, and (5) well-studied methods for solving engineering design problems. Two established non-parametric statistical methods, the Friedman test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, are used to analyze performance. The findings highlight the advantages of ΦPO across a range of numerical optimization problems, underscoring its competitiveness and potential in the field. Importantly, ΦPO was intentionally designed to be simple, interpretable, and parameter-free, avoiding complex adaptive strategies and extensive parameter tuning. It consistently delivers stable, high-quality solutions and exhibits fast convergence in many cases. The results demonstrate that ΦPO performs competitively across multiple benchmark suites, often ranking among the top-performing algorithms and outperforming several state-of-the-art methods, including recent CEC competition winners and engineering-specific optimizers. Its unique epistemic approach to solution refinement further enhances robustness, distinguishing it in both numerical and engineering optimization tasks.

Testing “quarantined” metarepresentational accounts of Theory of Mind: Are we biased by others' false beliefs?

Usually, people are under stress because of their own health issues, but clinicians are under stress because of others' (patients') health, and for them, they put their own health at stake. Here, by clinician, we mean every specialty of healthcare professionals (HCPs), physicians and surgeons. Clinicians are precious and their health is equally important. Unfortunately, most of the clinicians are not in good health because of the challenging and demanding needs of the profession, such as reading a lot while dealing with difficult cases and competition to cope with others. Most of the clinicians have a false belief that they are doing well, so they will not get any problem, or they themselves will take care of their health, and another very important fact is that most of them have little faith in their own colleagues, and this bitter truth must be accepted. Doctors need their own clinicians because despite their medical knowledge, they face a unique set of challenges such as exposure to high-stress, long working hours, altered sleep due to shift duties and irregular eating habits and non-nutritious diet, less time for self-care, and imbalance between family, professional and social life as well as stigma around mental health and treatment are sufficient to neglect their own health. They must have a sensitive physician to manage their health, like their patients, as family members of the doctors do not know whom to contact in case of emergency or the doctor's ill health. Doctors are not immune to health issues such as mental health, physical strain, burnout or infectious diseases, and various chronic diseases. Having their own doctor helps ensure they receive the unbiased healthcare they need, allowing them to continue caring for others effectively. Doctors play an essential role in maintaining the health of society, yet their own health is often compromised due to the stress of the demanding profession. Chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension (HT), coronary artery disease (CAD), thyroid disorders, and cancer are highly prevalent among HCPs, and the reasons are long working hours, sleep deprivation, emotional strain, and lack of time for self-care. By prioritizing regular health check-ups, stress management, physical activity, and a healthy working environment, and a balance between social, familial, and professional life, doctors can improve their own health. The key takeaway is adopting a holistic approach to doctors' well-being, which includes physical, mental, and emotional support, combining individual responsibility with institutional backing. Doctors should be empowered with the tools, resources, and cultural support they need to prioritize their own health to make society healthy. Large-scale surveys are required to find out the exact prevalence of various acute and chronic conditions among HCPs and how they are tackling them. Note: By clinician, we mean every specialty of doctors (HCPs), physicians, and surgeons. Terms such as physician, clinicians, doctors, and HCPs are used synonymously in this write-up.

Narrative language in autistic and control children: Differences between story retelling and story generation and associations to socio-pragmatic inferencing.

ABSTRACT Different cognitive predispositions have been proposed for why individuals believe in and share false information on social media. Drawing from a framework of cognitive drivers of false beliefs, this study examines the roles of analytical thinking, news literacy, and conspiratorial thinking in the veracity discernment of social media news posts and willingness to share them. Respondents in the U.S. U.K. and Hong Kong (China) were randomly exposed to ten social media news posts (five factual and five false headlines). Results showed that analytical thinking improved discernment of true and false headlines among the U.K. and Hong Kong participants, and conspiratorial thinking increased the perceived veracity of false news in the U.S. and U.K. News literacy increased discernment of true and false headlines across all samples, such that true posts were perceived as more accurate and false posts as more inaccurate. The findings demonstrate that the same cognitive drivers explain vulnerability to and resilience against misinformation in different cross-national contexts.

Abstract I aim at dissolving Saul Kripke’s dogmatism paradox by defending the idea that, with respect to any particular proposition p known by a subject A , it is not irrational for A to ignore all evidence against p . Here my defence of the dogmatic attitude depends on the crucial assumption – and this is an assumption made by Kripke himself in the setting of the paradox – that A wishes above all else to avoid gaining a false belief or losing a true one. An appendix briefly examines the possibility of a knowledge version of the paradox, as opposed to Kripke’s original true-belief version.

Abstract The sensitivity principle in epistemology has faced numerous, considerable, and relentless challenges since it emerged in Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations (1981). In this paper, I develop a version of sensitivity, based on Dretske’s notion of conclusive reasons (1971), that responds to the complaint that sensitivity is either incompatible with or makes an unprincipled mess of higher-level knowledge. There are three key moves in formulating reasons-based Dretskean sensitivity (RDS). First, sensitivity is conceived in terms of reasons, rather than beliefs, that track the truth. Second, focus shifts from whether S would have those reasons in the relevant counterfactual worlds to whether those reasons would be the case. Third, closer attention is paid to the structure of reasons. Critics of Nozick point out that, typically, even when S knows that they do not have a false belief that p, if S were to have a false belief that p, S would nonetheless believe that they do not have a false belief that p, violating Nozickean sensitivity. I explain how this fact does not preclude higher-level knowledge according to RDS, even if the false belief that p were based on their actual method.

Descriptive analysis of the knowledge amongst French patients about neovascular age-related macular degeneration as a function of social vulnerability, health literacy and date of diagnosis.

Children from Bulgaria (N = 120) were tested on language and Theory of Mind (ToM) development. Sixty were ethnic bilingual Turkish children, and 60 were monolingual ethnic Bulgarian children. The age of the children varied between 3;6 to 5;0 years old. Both groups of children in the study were tested in their mother tongues (Turkish and Bulgarian); the Turkish children were also tested in their second language (L2)—Bulgarian, with a language test and Theory of Mind test. Theory of Mind was tested with classical tasks plus a non-verbal ToM task, and the language test comprised measures of wh-complements and evidentiality marking. The hypotheses tested were: H1: The comprehension and production of wh-complements in the mother tongue (L1) at ages 3–6 years will support the understanding of ToM in their second language (L2). H2: Understanding “evidentiality” marking in the mother tongue will support an understanding of false belief ToM tasks in both languages. The results show that the Turkish-speaking children had a lower level of understanding of the classical ToM tasks than the Bulgarian monolingual children, but have equivalent results on the non-verbal ToM task. In the language test, the Turkish-speaking children were better in wh-complements, but weaker in performing the evidentiality test than the Bulgarian monolinguals. The predictors of performance in classic ToM tasks were different from the two ethnic groups: for the Bulgarian monolinguals, performance on the evidentiality test was the best predictor, but for Turkish bilingual children, performance on the low verbal tasks was the only predictor other than age, for both L1 and L2 ToM.

ABSTRACT Previous research on the relationship between theory of mind (ToM) and prosocial behavior in early childhood has produced conflicting findings – positive, negative, and null. We hypothesized that such inconsistencies arise because ToM facilitates altruism only when supported by moral motivation. To test this, we examined how ToM and anticipated self-conscious emotions jointly predict sharing in a dictator game among 254 Chinese preschoolers. ToM was measured via second-order false belief tasks; moral motivation was assessed through emotion attribution and justification in moral transgression scenarios. Research Findings: Results revealed significant main effects of ToM and moral motivation, as well as a robust interaction: children with high ToM shared more than peers – but only when they also displayed strong moral motivation. When moral motivation was low and medium, ToM had no effect. These findings suggest that both ToM and moral motivation jointly contribute to altruistic sharing, and that the presence of both cognitive and motivational components is critical for translating mentalizing capacity into prosocial action. Practice or Policy: The study suggests that educational interventions targeting prosocial development should not only foster mindreading skills but also nurture children’s capacity for empathic concern.

Abstract Which AI systems are capable of deception, and how does deception differ between systems? In this paper, I develop a two-step, multi-dimensional account of LLM deception. On this account, having the capacity for deception minimally requires being able to produce false beliefs in others to achieve one’s own goals. In all systems which satisfy this minimal condition, a system’s deception profile can be characterized as a point in a multidimensional space. The five dimensions of this space are skillfulness, learning, deceptive inclination, explicitness, and situational awareness. I argue for this account in virtue of its fit with current language usage and, primarily, through its descriptive and explanatory usefulness. Specifically, the account captures the key dimensions of variation for LLM deception. The account is informative in that it allows fine-grained comparative characterizations of deception. Moreover, its dimensions are all accessible to empirical study, provide important information for assessments of the risks of LLM deception, and shed light on the cognitive processes involved in LLM deception. Finally, this account paves the way for a future extension which delivers a unified account of deception in biological and non-biological systems. Thus, the multidimensional account promises to significantly advance both the scientific study as well as the ethical assessment of LLM deception, and deception generally.

ABSTRACT Advances in AI and our limited human capabilities have made AI decision-making opaque to humans. One prerequisite for enhancing the transparency of AI recommendations is improving AI explainability as humans need to be enabled to take responsibility for their actions even with AI support. Our study aims to tackle this issue by investigating two basic approaches to explainability: We evaluate numerical explanations, such as certainty measures, against verbal explanations, such as those provided by LLM as explanatory agents. Specifically, we examine whether verbal or numerical (or both) explanations in tasks of high uncertainty lure users into false beliefs or, on the contrary, promote appropriate reliance. Drawing on an experiment with 441 participants, we explore the dynamics of non-expert users' interactions with AI under varying explanatory conditions. Results show that explanations significantly improve reliance and decision accuracy. Numerical explanations aid in identifying uncertainties and errors, but the users' reliance on the advice falls far behind the given numerical certainty. Verbal explanations foster higher reliance while increasing the risk of over-reliance. Combining both explanation types enhances reliance but further amplifies blind trust in AI.

ABSTRACT Scenarios of sabotage were used to investigate children's appreciation of desires as subjective attitudes. Fifty-one pre-schoolers showed high proficiency in inferring an action in a cooperative scenario where two agents had a common goal and intended to coordinate goal achievement. However, they were at chance in inferring an action in a competitive scenario where two agents had a conflict of values and one intended to sabotage the others’ goal achievement. Moreover, understanding of sabotage was correlated with false belief understanding after controlling for age, verbal ability, working memory, inhibitory control, and planning. This result suggests a symmetrical development of understanding beliefs and desires by means of subjective attitudes as predicted by Perner and Roessler’s teleological theory of action explanation. As soon as children are able to understand perspectives, they appreciate false beliefs as well as conflicting values as reasons for actions.