Metarepresentational Capacity Research Articles

Children’s Developing Understanding of the Subjectivity of Intentions – A Case of “Advanced Theory of Mind”

ABSTRACT When and how do children develop an understanding of the subjectivity of intentions? Intentions are subjective mental states in many ways. One way concerns their aspectuality: Whether or not a given behavior constitutes an intentional action depends on how, under which aspect, the agent represents it. Oedipus, for example, intended to marry Yocasta, but did not intend to marry his mother (even though in fact, but unbeknownst to him, Yocasta was his mother). In the present study, we investigated the trajectories and determinants of children’s developing understanding of (less dramatic forms of) the aspectuality of intentions. In two studies, children aged 3–9 observed an agent who acted intentionally but based on some mis-representation regarding the target of her action. The agent grasped a box that contained A and B while believing that it only contained A but not B. Children were asked about the aspectuality of the agent’s intention (in particular, whether she intended to grasp B). When asked to do so spontaneously, children younger than 8 failed (falsely claiming that the agent intended to grasp B). In contrast, in a simplified format in which children were scaffolded through the required inferential chains, children from age 6 succeeded. Children’s general capacity for meta-representation appeared to be necessary but not sufficient by itself for understanding the aspectuality of intentions. The present findings suggest that the appreciation of the aspectuality of intentions is part of an advanced theory of mind that develops in much more protracted ways than basic theory of mind.

METALEPSIS AND THE METAREFERENTIAL POTENTIAL OF DUŠAN RADOVIĆ’SRADIO PLAYHOW BAD WORDS CAME ABOUT

Metalepsis and metareference are not new concepts in literary theory, but thanks to the hypermediation of contemporary culture, they have acquireda broader meaning that transcends intertextual relations. Metalepsis originally belongs to rhetoric where it denotesany kind of permutation, yetin the sphere of narratology it isunderstood as "the use of one word instead of another by transferring the meaning [...] a synonym ofboth metonymy and metaphor" (Genette 2006: 6). From Aristotle who reduced metalepsis to analogy and the gift "to notice well what is similar" (Aristotle 2008: 1459a),bydevelopment of media that not only depict but also create reality, we have come tometalepsis as a figure that unites author and work, connects the reader with the narration andbybroadening themeaning leads to the metadiegetic breakingdownof the boundaries between fiction and reality:"The limits of the use of metalepsis are set only by the recipient’s ability to understand it in the right way.If the author's intention to go beyond the framework is too 79confusing, such a figure does not achieve its goal"(Petković 2018: 239). Narratologist Werner Wolf noticed the similarityof metalepsis, thus defined,with the notion of metareference, which establishes intertextual andintermedial connections in the context of reality oversaturated with media content, producing a new phenomenon of transmediality –the influence of form (McLuhan 1971: 41) on the narrative and its communication with recipients: „‘Metareference’ as a transmedial concept can in brief be explained as follows: metareference issues forth from a logically higher 'meta-level' within a given artefact or performance, and denotes any self-reflexive reference to, or comment on, media-related aspects of the given medial artefact or performance, of a particular medium or the media in general ”(Wolf 2011: c). Dan Sperber attributes to humans a “metarepresentational capacity” that is “no less fundamental than the faculty for language”, and he claims that “[u] nderstanding the character and the role of this [...] capacity might change our view of what it is to be human (Sperber according to Wolf 2009: 2). The narratologiststancethat the narrator's direct address to the reader is also a metareference, likean authorial metalepsis, places Dušan Radović, a Serbian writer andmedia author, among the most deserving for creating a literary work that is "a great stage presentation and is as such received"(Jovanović 2001: 83). The founderof modern Serbian children's literature, Radović is an example of an original creator as a "genius who prescribes a rule for art" (Kant 1991: 191). Radović's radio play How BadWords Came Aboutis a good example of involving listeners and readers in metareferential recognition and decoding of meaning in metaconsciousness, and thenina liberating emotional reaction that does not question "reality", but indicates the diversity and richness of its media-mediated meanings.

NATURAL AND ARTEFACTUAL LANGUAGES

Abstract Natural language provides a mechanism for cultural evolution by ensuring the persistent heredity of variations in both cultural information and information about its own construction. In the process, it not only facilitates but also limits our thinking to the ways its vocabulary and structures make possible. But the human capacity for metarepresentation frees cultural information from the restrictions of any one medium or language, and has also propelled the evolution of artefactual languages, which provide evolutionary mechanisms for specialist areas of culture. And cooperation between diverse cultural specialists can stimulate further, innovative competition between the cultural information that they share.

New Sincerity and Commitment to Emotion in Dorothea Lasky’s Poetry

ABSTRACT “New Sincerity”, a renewed attention to sincerity, has been connected to metamodernism, a periodizing term that marks a tension between irony and sincerity and an extension of modernism and postmodernism. While both New Sincerity and metamodernism have been discussed in relation to fiction and the other arts, they have not been widely considered in poetry. The article considers the associations of the term New Sincerity in US poet Dorothea Lasky’s work, placing her work in the context of metamodernism. With reference to metarepresentation, a cognitive science term that refers to conceptualising what others think, I argue that in Lasky’s poems, New Sincerity functions as a persuasive tonal orientation that exhibits sincerity’s vexed position as both seemingly naïve and necessary. Lasky’s poems make use of the human mind’s metarepresentational capacity as they fluctuate between sincerity and irony.

Why Do Young Children Look so Smart and Older Children Look so Dumb on True Belief Control Tasks? An Investigation of Pragmatic Performance Factors

ABSTRACTWhen do children acquire a meta-representational Theory of Mind? False Belief (FB) tasks have become the litmus test to answer this question. In such tasks, subjects must ascribe a non-veridical belief to another agent and predict/explain her actions accordingly. Empirically, children pass explicit verbal versions of FB tasks from around age 4. The standard interpretation of this finding is that children at this age have acquired a solid capacity for meta-representation. New research with true belief (TB) control tasks, however, presents a puzzling phenomenon: While 3-year-olds pass these tasks but fail FB tasks, children from age 4 begin to show the reverse performance (passing FB but failing TB). Competence deficit accounts claim that these findings jeopardize the standard interpretation; they show that children may use simple heuristics rather than true meta-representation and that the original FB findings may thus have been false positives. Pragmatic performance limitation accounts, in contrast, claim that these findings do not document any conceptual limitations, but merely reflect children’s confusion in light of the task pragmatics. In the present study, the two accounts were tested against each other in seven experiments with 4- to 7-year-old children. Pragmatic tasks factors of TB tests were systematically modified. Results show that children’s difficulty with TB tasks indeed disappeared after some such modifications. This clearly speaks against competence limitation accounts and corroborates the standard interpretation of FB and related Theory of Mind tasks.

On the origin of the left-Hegelian concept of immanent transcendence: Reflections on the background of classical sociology

This article pursues the question of the origin of the left-Hegelian concept of immanent transcendence that emerged in the nineteenth century. Whereas some contemporary critical theorists apparently understand the concept as deriving from a religious origin, evolutionary and historical considerations would seem to indicate that more might be involved. Evolutionarily, the origin of the concept can be traced to the civilisation-founding cognitive achievement that marks the emergence of the current version of the human species and the concomitant cultural explosion during the Palaeolithic period. In this context, the cultural consolidation of the newly acquired metarepresentational capacity by language and visual symbolisation or art preceded religion by a considerable elapse of time. As one among a number of sociocultural practices, it could only have made a partial contribution to the conditions for the emergence of the concept. Historically, the thought of the key nineteenth-century left-Hegelians Marx and Peirce was fundamentally shaped, not by religion, but rather by the core modern innovation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – the new mathematical-scientific-philosophical understanding of infinity as real – which gained primacy by significantly impacting on relevant late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectual developments, including laying down the parameters of classical social thought in general and left-Hegelianism in particular. Since the competing religious understanding of infinity, despite having left traces on modern validity concepts such as truth, justice and truthfulness, remained shrouded in indefinite incomprehensibility, it could at best continue to play only the role of an identity-securing, identity-cultivating and motivational source for some, not all. As such, it did not contribute to the nineteenth-century left-Hegelian concept.

Misconceptions about adaptive function.

Mahr & Csibra (M&C) fail to make the important distinction between why a trait originally evolved, why it was maintained over time, and what its current utility is. Here we point out that episodic memory may have originally evolved as a by-product of a general metarepresentational capacity, and that it may have current functions beyond the communicative domain.

Meta-Cognitive Ability and Brain Damage in Autoimmune Encephalitis: A Case Report

Autoimmune encephalitis is an important contributor to rapidly progressive cognitive and behavioral decline. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the effects of cognitive rehabilitation in a patient with autoimmune encephalitis. We also wanted to evaluate the effectiveness of rehabilitative treatment by monitoring the cognitive and metacognitive outcomes over a time interval. We reported a case of 22 year-old female patient with autoimmune encephalitis, cognitive behavioral impairments, and severe reduction in metarepresentational capacity. We performed an assessment of personality, neuropsychological, and meta-cognitive functions at the beginning of the rehabilitative training. The last evaluation was performed six months after the discharge from the rehabilitation unit. We applied a combination of remediation, psycho-educational treatment, and psychotherapy to improve the knowledge and the empathy of the patient, to promote the selfcontrol strategies, and to prompt better behavioral management. Our findings revealed an improvement in the performance of the individual tests after rehabilitative training.

The codification of intersubjectivity in the diachronic change AD locative > A(D) indirect object in Spanish

The principal aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between intersubjectivity and grammar. We argue that intersubjectivity represents, on the one hand, a prerequisite for the development of language as a symbolic system, and therefore also for the development of grammar. Furthermore, we attempt to show that language, and especially grammar, codify intersubjectivity. That is to say, grammatical constructions represent the intersubjective interactions that situated agents maintain in different pragmatic contects. We call this phenomenon the meta-representational capacity of language. Our main object of analysis is the development of the ditransitive construction (give something to someone - dar algo a alguien) in the Spanish language. The evolution of this construction makes it clear that there is an important correlation between the degree of complexity of the codified intersubjective interaction and grammatically obligatory nature and the prominence of the grammatical construction that codifies it: the greater the complexity, the greater its obligatoriness, and vice versa.

Pretense and Autism

Jason Stanley raises an important objection to hermeneutic fictionalism. The objection is called “The Autism Objection.” In this paper, I examine Stanley’s objection and defend hermeneutic fictionalism against it. After I show that the Autism Objection assumes the metarepresentational theory of pretense, I argue, mainly based on recent psychological studies, that pretense does not require the metarepresentational capacity. By doing this, I show that there are no good reasons to accept one of the premises the Autism Objection, that people with autism lack the capacity to pretend. Finally, I mention two limitations of this paper.

Is Verbal Irony Special?

AbstractThe way we speak can reveal much about what we intend to communicate, but the words we use often only indirectly relate to the meanings we wish to convey. Verbal irony is a commonly studied form of indirect speech in which a speaker produces an explicit evaluative utterance that implicates an unstated, opposing evaluation. Producing and understanding ironic language, as well as many other types of indirect speech, requires the ability to recognize mental states in others, sometimes described as a capacity for metarepresentation. This article aims to connect common elements between the major theoretical approaches to verbal irony to recent psycholinguistic, developmental, and neuropsychological research demonstrating the necessity for metarepresentation in the effective use of verbal irony in social interaction. Here I will argue that verbal irony is one emergent, strategic possibility given the interface between people’s ability to infer mental states, and use language. Rather than think of ironic communication as a specialized cognitive ability, I will claim that it arises from the same set of abilities that underlie a wide range of inferential communicative behaviors.

Poster #59 BETTER THEORY-OF-MIND SKILLS IN CHILDREN HEARING VOICES MITIGATE THE RISK OF SECONDARY DELUSION FORMATION

Modular theory-of-mind accounts attribute poor mentalizing to disruption of a cognitive module dedicated to computing higher-order representations of primary representations (metarepresentations). Since metarepresentational capacity is needed to mentalize about other people's beliefs but is not needed to judge visual perspectives (which can be done by mentally rotating primary representations of seen objects), this view predicts that visual perspective-taking will be intact in individuals with selective mentalizing impairments. Counter to that prediction, this study found evidence of disturbed visual perspective-taking in normal adults who score higher on the personality variable of schizotypy and who are known to be relatively poor mentalizers (despite intact ability to inhibit salient inappropriate information in order to reason consequentially on the basis of hypothetical states, other than mental states). Whereas high-schizotypal adults and low-schizotypal adults did not differ in their ability to judge item questions (asking the relative location of array features), high-schizotypal adults performed more poorly than low-schizotypal adults in judging appearance questions (asking how an array would appear from another perspective) under viewer-rotation instructions (asking subjects to imagine moving themselves relative to a fixed array) and performed better than low-schizotypal adults in judging appearance questions under array-rotation instructions (asking subjects to imagine rotating an array relative to their own fixed viewer position). Based on these and other findings we conclude that poor mentalizing in normal adults is better understood as an impairment of perspective-taking (visual and/or cognitive) and introduce the concept of allocentric simulation to explain the functional basis of this perspective-taking impairment.

A BIAS AGAINST DISCONFIRMATORY EVIDENCE IS ASSOCIATED WITH DELUSIONS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

Mentalization (i.e., the ability to think about states of mind (e.g., thoughts, feelings, intentions) in the self and other people) and metacognition (‘thinking about thinking’) have increasingly been linked both theoretically and empirically, as both constructs involve the capacity for meta-representation within social contexts. Promising evidence is emerging for the value of metacognitive psychotherapy in the treatment of people with schizophrenia. In this chapter, we present the rationale for adapting a mentalization-based treatment (MBT) approach to the recovery of mental state understanding in schizophrenia.

What's domain-specific about theory of mind?

Twenty years ago, Baron-Cohen and colleagues argued that autistic performance on false belief tests was explained by a deficit in metarepresentation. Subsequent research moved from the view that the mind has a domain-general capacity for metarepresentation to the view that the mind has a domain-specific mechanism for metarepresentation of mental states per se, i.e., the theory of mind mechanism (ToMM). We argue that 20 years of data collection in lesion patients and children with autism supports a more parsimonious view closer to that of the 1985 paper. Lower-level domain-specific mechanisms—e.g., tracking gaze, joint attention—interacting with higher-level domain-general mechanisms for metarepresentation, recursion, and executive function can account for observed patterns of deficits in both autism and neurological patients. The performance of children with autism or orbitofrontal patients on ToM tests can be explained more parsimoniously by their deficits in lower-level domain-specific mechanisms for processing social information. Without proper inputs, the intact capacity for metarepresentation by itself cannot make correct ToM inferences. Children with autism have no impairment in false photograph tests because their metarepresentational capacity is intact and they have no impairment in inputs required for such tests. TPJ patients have equivalent deficits on ToM and non-ToM metarepresentational tasks, consistent with a failure in domain-general processing. If deficits on ToM tasks can result from deficits in low-level input systems or in higher-level domain-general capacities, postulating a separate ToM mechanism may have been an unnecessary theoretical move.

Visual and cognitive perspective-taking impairments in schizophrenia: A failure of allocentric simulation ?

Introduction. Poor mentalising in some patients with schizophrenia has been attributed to disruption of a cognitive module dedicated to computing meta - representations (representations of beliefs about propositions) and linked specifically to paranoia. Because meta-representational capacity is needed to infer beliefs but is not needed to judge visual perspectives (which can be done by mentally rotating primary representations of seen objects), this view predicts that patients with selective mentalising deficits will show intact visual perspectivetaking. Method. This study tested that prediction by investigating visual perspective-taking in patients and healthy controls, known to differ in mentalising ability. Item questions (asking locations of array-features) and appearance questions (asking how an array appears from another perspective) were presented with both viewer-rotation instructions (asking subjects to imagine moving themselves relative to an array) and array-rotation instructions (asking subjects to imagine rotating an array relative to their fixed viewpoint). Results. Whereas patients performed as well as controls on item questions (regardless of instruction) and appearance questions under array-rotation instructions, patients made more egocentric errors than controls judging appearance questions under viewer-rotation instructions. Conclusions. Our findings count against traditional theory-of-mind accounts and suggest instead that poor mentalising in schizophrenia is better understood as an impairment of perspective-taking.

Visual perspective-taking and schizotypy: evidence for a simulation-based account of mentalizing in normal adults

Modular theory-of-mind accounts attribute poor mentalizing to disruption of a cognitive module dedicated to computing higher-order representations of primary representations (metarepresentations). Since metarepresentational capacity is needed to mentalize about other people's beliefs but is not needed to judge visual perspectives (which can be done by mentally rotating primary representations of seen objects), this view predicts that visual perspective-taking will be intact in individuals with selective mentalizing impairments. Counter to that prediction, this study found evidence of disturbed visual perspective-taking in normal adults who score higher on the personality variable of schizotypy and who are known to be relatively poor mentalizers (despite intact ability to inhibit salient inappropriate information in order to reason consequentially on the basis of hypothetical states, other than mental states). Whereas high-schizotypal adults and low-schizotypal adults did not differ in their ability to judge item questions (asking the relative location of array features), high-schizotypal adults performed more poorly than low-schizotypal adults in judging appearance questions (asking how an array would appear from another perspective) under viewer-rotation instructions (asking subjects to imagine moving themselves relative to a fixed array) and performed better than low-schizotypal adults in judging appearance questions under array-rotation instructions (asking subjects to imagine rotating an array relative to their own fixed viewer position). Based on these and other findings we conclude that poor mentalizing in normal adults is better understood as an impairment of perspective-taking (visual and/or cognitive) and introduce the concept of allocentric simulation to explain the functional basis of this perspective-taking impairment.

Imagination, Delusion and Hallucinations

Chris Frith has argued that a loss of the sense of agency is central to schizophrenia. This suggests a connection between hallucinations and delusions on the one hand, and the misidentification of the subject’s imaginings as perceptions and beliefs on the other. In particular, understanding the mechanisms that underlie imagination may help us to explain the puzzling phenomena of thought insertion and withdrawal. Frith sometimes states his argument in terms of a loss of metarepresentational capacity in schizophrenia. I argue that this formulation is unhelpful.

Understanding photos, models, and beliefs: A test of the modularity thesis of theory of mind

Recent experimental findings suggest that there is a dissociation between the performance by children with autism on False Belief tasks, on which they do poorly, and False Photograph, False Maps, and False Drawing tasks, on which they do well. This may be because only the False Belief task taps the capacity for metarepresentation, at least as defined by Leslie and Thaiss (1992). In an attempt to test the modularity of this capacity further, the performance of participants with autism on DeLoache's (1987, 1991) Model and Photograph tasks (which test understanding of the symbolic function of models and photographs), and on a standard False Belief task, was compared to that of mental handicap controls. The majority of participants from both groups passed the Photograph and Model tasks, and on neither task were there group differences. However, participants with mental handicap were significantly more successful on the False Belief task than those with autism. These results provide further support for the modularity of theory of mind, and the specificity of the metarepresentational deficit in autism.

Joint-attention deficits in autism: Towards a cognitive analysis

AbstractMundy and Sigman (1989) present a challenge to the metarepresentational theory of autism. Their argument holds if it is assumed that the capacity for metarepresentation only emerges at 12–24 months old in normal development, as manifested in pretend play. However, I present reasons for postulating that the capacity for metarepresentation may be present from as early as 7–9 months of age, manifested in joint-attention behaviors. If this account has any validity, then the metarepresentational theory of autism is unaffected by Mundy and Sigman's challenge. In addition, I highlight some problems in Mundy and Sigman's alternative model of autism. These criticisms aside, their article is without doubt important and opens up critical questions both for models of the origins of autism and of a theory of mind in normal development.

The theoretical implications of joint-attention deficits in autism

AbstractDeficits in gestural joint-attention behaviors are a prominent feature of young autistic children. Attempts to explain these deficits have called upon the metarepresentational deficit hypothesis (Baron-Cohen, 1988; Leslie & Frith, 1988). However, developmental research suggests that joint-attention skills emerge prior to the cognitive capacity for metarepresentation. Thus, the metarepresentational hypothesis does not appear to provide a parsimonious explanation of autistic joint-attention deficits. An alternative model is proposed that attempts to explain these deficits in terms of the combined negative impact of developmental disturbances in affective, as well as cognitive, processes.