Mind-reading Abilities Research Articles

Characterization of implicit and explicit mind-reading in children with autism based on eye movements.

This study aimed to investigate differences in mind-reading abilities between children with autism and typically developing children across various tasks. Sixteen children with autism (aged 5-8 years) were compared to 16 typically developing children matched in language ability. The unexpected location task and unexpected content task were used to assess implicit and explicit mind-reading abilities using an eye tracker and illustrated storybooks. For implicit mind, using differential looking scores shows a no significant difference between the scores of children with autism and typically developing children in the implicit tasks (P=0.399). However, the pupil size show some significant difference between two groups. Second, for the explicit, a significant difference between the scores of children with autism and typically developing children in the explicit tasks (P=0.006). Additionally, only a significant correlation between implicit and explicit mind-reading abilities in children with autism in the unexpected location task was found. The mechanism of implicit mind-reading still not very clear. Pupil-Linked arousal response can be consider as a further tool. Further research on implicit and explicit mind-reading abilities is warranted.

Co-perceiving: Bringing the social into perception.

Humans and other animals possess the remarkable ability to effectively navigate a shared perceptual environment by discerning which objects and spaces are perceived by others and which remain private to themselves. Traditionally, this capacity has been encapsulated under the umbrella of joint attention or joint action. In this comprehensive review, we advocate for a broader and more mechanistic understanding of this phenomenon, termed co-perception. Co-perception encompasses the sensitivity to the perceptual engagement of others and the capability to differentiate between objects perceived privately and those perceived commonly with others. It represents a distinct concept from mere simultaneous individual perception. Moreover, discerning between private and common objects doesn't necessitate intricate mind-reading abilities or mutual coordination. The act of perceiving objects as either private or common provides a comprehensive account for social scenarios where individuals simply share the same context or may even engage in competition. This conceptual framework encourages a re-examination of classical paradigms that demonstrate social influences on perception. Furthermore, it suggests that the impacts of shared experiences extend beyond affective responses, also influencing perceptual processes. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention Philosophy > Foundations of Cognitive Science Philosophy > Psychological Capacities.

Mindreading measures misread? A multimethod investigation into the validity of self-report and task-based approaches.

Mindreading ability-also referred to as cognitive empathy or mentalizing-is typically conceptualized as a relatively stable dimension of individual differences in the ability to make accurate inferences about the mental states of others. This construct is primarily assessed using self-report questionnaires and task-based performance measures. However, the validity of these measures has been questioned: According to rival interpretations, mindreading tasks may capture general cognitive ability, whereas mindreading self-reports may capture perceived rather than actual mindreading ability. In this preregistered multimethod study involving 700 participants from the U.S. general population, we tested the validity of mindreading measures by examining the nomological network of self-reports and task-based methods using structural equation modeling. Specifically, we contrasted the empirical associations with theoretical predictions that assume mindreading measures are valid versus invalid. More consistent with rival interpretations, mindreading tasks showed a negligible latent correlation with mindreading self-reports (.05) and a large one with general cognitive ability (.85), whereas mindreading self-reports were specifically associated with perceived performance in mindreading tasks (.29). Also more consistent with rival interpretations, neither mindreading self-reports nor task-based measures showed positive unique associations with psychosocial functioning when controlling for general cognitive ability and general positive self-evaluation. Instead, negative unique associations emerged for both methods, although this effect was not robust for tasks. Overall, the results cast doubt on the validity of commonly used mindreading measures and support their rival interpretations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Relationship Between Brain-Behavior Systems, Dark Personality Traits, Alexithymia, and Theory of Mind Deficits in Sexual Offenders

The aim of the current research is to examine the relationship between brain-behavior systems, dark personality dimensions, and Alexithymia with theory of mind deficits in sexual offenders. For this purpose, 80 inmates from the central prison of Bojnurd were selected using purposive sampling. The variables were measured using the Gray-Wilson Personality Questionnaire (GWPQ), the Dirty Dozen scale of dark personality traits, the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficients and multiple regression analysis. The results showed a significant positive correlation between the fight system and theory of mind deficits; and significant negative correlations between the flight and freeze systems, all aspects of dark personality dimensions, difficulty in identifying and describing feelings, and overall Alexithymia with theory of mind deficits. The regression analysis findings suggest that the fight/flight/freeze systems, dark personality traits, and Alexithymia play predictive roles in mind-reading abilities.

Mindreading beliefs in same- and cross-neurotype interactions.

Autistic people are often characterised as having problems with mindreading, which refers to understanding other people's thoughts, beliefs and feelings. However, it has recently been suggested that mindreading difficulties may be a two-way issue between autistic and non-autistic people. This would imply that autistic people may not have difficulty reading the minds of other autistic people, whereas non-autistic people may struggle to read autistic people effectively. In this study, we created a survey in which we asked a relatively large sample of autistic and non-autistic people to rate their own and others' mindreading abilities in relation to autistic and non-autistic others, respectively. Both groups believed that they were better at reading others in their own group than the other group. The autistic respondents reported levels of mindreading skill at least commensurate with the non-autistic respondents when the mind to be read was specified as autistic. Thus, both groups of participants' responses were consistent with the notion that mindreading abilities are relational. Although self-reports are subjective, such beliefs could have important consequences for well-being and intergroup relations.

Is reading fiction associated with a higher mind-reading ability? Two conceptual replication studies in Japan.

Previous studies have revealed that reading fiction is associated with dispositional empathy and theory-of-mind abilities. Earlier studies established a correlation between fiction reading habits and the two measures of social cognition: trait fantasy (i.e., the tendency to transpose oneself into fictitious characters) and performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET; a test of the ability to identify others' mental states based on their eyes). Recently, experimental studies have shown that brief exposure to fiction enhances RMET performance. Nevertheless, these studies have been conducted only in Western countries, and few published studies have investigated these relationships in Asian countries. This research aims to address this gap. Study 1, which involved 338 Japanese undergraduates, conceptually replicated the previously reported correlations between fiction reading and fantasy and RMET scores (after statistically controlling for the effect of outliers). However, Study 2, which involved 304 Japanese undergraduates, failed to replicate the causal relationship. Participants read an excerpt either from literary fiction or from nonfiction, or engaged in a calculation task, before completing the RMET. Brief exposure to literary fiction did not increase the RMET score. In sum, this study replicated the associations of fiction reading with fantasy and RMET scores in Japan, but failed to replicate the causal relationship.

When irony is faster than its literal control: The role of mindreading during irony comprehension.

Irony is a heavily context-dependent pragmatic phenomenon. But what is it about context that facilitates or blocks irony comprehension? Based on the echoic account, we suggest that a context facilitates irony comprehension when it makes manifest a speaker's intentions and attitude, i.e., when a context makes it easy for participants to engage their mindreading abilities. In two pre-registered self-paced reading experiments, we investigated the comprehension of sentences in English that could be understood as ironic or literal, according to the story frame that participants read leading to the target sentence. In Experiment 1, we found that when the story frames prevent participants from anticipating the speaker's intention, literal readings of critical sentences are-not surprisingly-faster than ironic ones. Importantly, when the story frames gave access to the speaker's intentions, we find cases in which ironic readings are actually faster than literal ones, resulting in a novel finding for the irony comprehension literature. Further, when the speaker was described as having a sincere attitude towards their utterance, participants tended to understand the utterances literally. They tended to understand them ironically when it was not clear what the speaker's attitude was. In Experiment 2 we investigated whether the findings of Experiment 1 could be linked to individual differences in participants' mindreading abilities. We found that participants who scored higher on a standard Theory of Mind task (the "Reading the mind in the Eyes" task) were significantly more likely to derive ironic-but not literal-interpretations. We see these results as supporting the echoic account of irony comprehension. This work discusses the relevance of our findings to the long-standing debate on the processing effort of ironic versus literal sentences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Functional connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex related to mindreading abilities.

The medial prefrontal cortex is a key region of mindreading belonging to the mentalizing system, a set of brain areas underlying mental state inference based on reasoning on social concepts. The aim of this study was to characterize the functional connectivity between regions involved in mindreading and to highlight the processes it underpins, focusing on the dorsal and ventral parts of the medial prefrontal cortex. We analyzed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging of 56 healthy volunteers, to study the relationship between mindreading abilities and functional connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex. Cognitive mindreading performances were correlated with connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and frontal regions involved in the regulation of the salience of one’s own mental contents, with a distinction between the dorsal part connected to regions subtending inhibition processes and the ventral part to emotional regions. Affective mindreading performances were negatively correlated with negative connectivity of the ventro- and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex with sensorimotor regions belonging to the mirror neuron system subtending the simulation of mental states. These findings suggested a role of the medial prefrontal cortex to decrease the salience of one’s own mental content and in the antisynchronous interaction between the mentalizing and mirror neurons systems.

Mind-Reading Ability Predicts Sales Performance: Evidence from Financial Consultants

Mind-Reading Ability Predicts Sales Performance: Evidence from Financial Consultants

Mind-Reading Ability Predicts Sales Performance: Evidence from Financial Consultants

Mind-Reading Ability Predicts Sales Performance: Evidence from Financial Consultants

Early mindreading scale: From joint attention to false-belief understanding

ABSTRACT The current research aims at constructing a developmentally sensitive mindreading scale (i.e., a battery of tasks measuring different aspects of mindreading ability in children from 1 to 3.5 years of age). Over 300 Polish children were tested at six-month intervals with 48 different tasks designed to measure mindreading ability (for a total of six measurement occasions, T1-T6; NT1 = 357; MageT1 = 52,30 weeks; SD = 1,73; 201 (56%) boys, 156 (44%) girls). Using latent trait modelling, a latent mindreading factor was established. Support was found for satisfactory reliability of the scale that ultimately consisted of 31 tasks. The tasks were age-matched, as the information curves for latent factors for each of the six age ranges and the reliability of the composite constructs were mostly acceptable. The validity was also confirmed using correlational analyses, and the continuous development of mindreading was observed over the tested age ranges: from joint attention, through using gestures in communication and visual perspective taking, to false-belief understanding. The proposed scale is suitable for use in the investigation of the general pattern of the development of, and individual differences in, mindreading ability.

Linking metacognition and mindreading: Evidence from autism and dual-task investigations.

Questions of how we know our own and other minds, and whether metacognition and mindreading rely on the same processes, are longstanding in psychology and philosophy. In Experiment 1, children/adolescents with autism (who tend to show attenuated mindreading) showed significantly lower accuracy on an explicit metacognition task than neurotypical children/adolescents, but not on an allegedly metacognitive implicit one. In Experiment 2, neurotypical adults completed these tasks in a single-task condition or a dual-task condition that required concurrent completion of a secondary task that tapped mindreading. Metacognitive accuracy was significantly diminished by the dual-mindreading-task on the explicit task but not the implicit task. In Experiment 3, we included additional dual-tasks to rule out the possibility that any secondary task (regardless of whether it required mindreading) would diminish metacognitive accuracy. Finally, in both Experiments 1 and 2, metacognitive accuracy on the explicit task, but not the implicit task, was associated significantly with performance on a measure of mindreading ability. These results suggest that explicit metacognitive tasks (used frequently to measure metacognition in humans) share metarepresentational processing resources with mindreading, whereas implicit tasks (which are claimed by some comparative psychologists to measure metacognition in nonhuman animals) do not.

A Relationship between Theory of Mind and Pragmatic Language in Adolescents with Mild Intellectual Disabilities

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of pragmatic language ability, which is known to be closely related to the performance level of mind-reading ability of adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities, the theory of mind, and the relationship among them.Methods: A total of 40 (20 adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities aged 19-21 years; 20 children with language age-matched) participated in this study. Mind-reading ability and pragmatic language ability of adolescents with mild intellectual disability and those of children with language age-matched were evaluated and compared.Results: The adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities showed significantly lower performance in mind-reading ability and pragmatic language ability when compared to the control group. Among subtasks of pragmatic language ability, only nonverbal communication was positively correlated with faux pas of mind-reading ability.Conclusion: The present study suggests that mind-reading ability can be related to pragmatic language ability in adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities. We believe that current findings support to understand essential Knowledge required to develop and establish language intervention and communication-related assessment tools that encompass the mind-reading ability of adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities.

A computational model of the cultural co-evolution of language and mindreading

Several evolutionary accounts of human social cognition posit that language has co-evolved with the sophisticated mindreading abilities of modern humans. It has also been argued that these mindreading abilities are the product of cultural, rather than biological, evolution. Taken together, these claims suggest that the evolution of language has played an important role in the cultural evolution of human social cognition. Here we present a new computational model which formalises the assumptions that underlie this hypothesis, in order to explore how language and mindreading interact through cultural evolution. This model treats communicative behaviour as an interplay between the context in which communication occurs, an agent’s individual perspective on the world, and the agent’s lexicon. However, each agent’s perspective and lexicon are private mental representations, not directly observable to other agents. Learners are therefore confronted with the task of jointly inferring the lexicon and perspective of their cultural parent, based on their utterances in context. Simulation results show that given these assumptions, an informative lexicon evolves not just under a pressure to be successful at communicating, but also under a pressure for accurate perspective-inference. When such a lexicon evolves, agents become better at inferring others’ perspectives; not because their innate ability to learn about perspectives changes, but because sharing a language (of the right type) with others helps them to do so.

The mediating role of child's cognitive emotion regulation in the relationship between parental mindfulness and child's mind reading ability.

The present research aimed at investigating the relationship between parental mindfulness and the child's mind reading ability based on his cognitive emotion regulation as playing a mediating role in the cultural context of Iran. The final participants included 278 primary school children and their parents from Kerman city in 2017. Mindfulness was measured by the interpersonal mindfulness in parenting scale, cognitive emotion regulation by cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire of kids, and mind reading by reading the mind in the eyes test for children. Based on the findings, the model was significant only for mothers and effects of awareness and present-centered attention and non-reactivity, as facets of parental mindfulness, on the child's mind reading ability were mediated partly and completely by the child's positive cognitive emotion regulation, respectively. The relationship pattern of variables was equal for boys and girls. Planning applied interventions based on the results of this study are recommended.

Are self-report cognitive empathy ratings valid proxies for cognitive empathy ability? Negligible meta-analytic relations with behavioral task performance.

Empathy is widely regarded as relevant to a diverse range of psychopathological constructs, such as autism spectrum disorder, psychopathy, and borderline personality disorder. Cognitive empathy (CE) is the ability to accurately recognize or infer the thoughts and feelings of others. Although behavioral task paradigms are frequently used to assess such abilities, a large proportion of published studies reporting on CE use self-report questionnaires. For decades, however, a number of theorists have cautioned that individuals may not possess the metacognitive insight needed to validly gauge their own mindreading abilities. To investigate this possibility, we examined the aggregate relations between behavioral CE task performance and self-report CE scale scores, as well as with self-report affective empathy scale scores for comparison. Meta-analytic results, based on random effects models, from 85 studies (total N = 14,327) indicate that self-report CE scores account for only approximately 1% of the variance in behavioral cognitive empathy assessments and that, perhaps equally importantly, this relation is not significantly different from that demonstrated by affective empathy scores. Effect sizes were not moderated by self-report empathy domain, gender composition, unisensory versus multisensory behavioral stimuli presentation, child versus adult samples, or by normative versus clinical/forensic samples. Effect size estimates were not markedly affected by publication bias. These results raise serious concerns regarding the widespread use of self-report CE scores as proxies for CE ability, as well as the extensive theoretical conclusions that have been based on their use in past studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Relationships between implicit and explicit uncertainty monitoring and mindreading: Evidence from autism spectrum disorder.

We examined performance on implicit (non-verbal) and explicit (verbal) uncertainty-monitoring tasks among neurotypical participants and participants with autism, while also testing mindreading abilities in both groups. We found that: (i) performance of autistic participants was unimpaired on the implicit uncertainty-monitoring task, while being significantly impaired on the explicit task; (ii) performance on the explicit task was correlated with performance on mindreading tasks in both groups, whereas performance on the implicit uncertainty-monitoring task was not; and (iii) performance on implicit and explicit uncertainty-monitoring tasks was not correlated. The results support the view that (a) explicit uncertainty-monitoring draws on the same cognitive faculty as mindreading whereas (b) implicit uncertainty-monitoring only test first-order decision making. These findings support the theory that metacognition and mindreading are underpinned by the same meta-representational faculty/resources, and that the implicit uncertainty-monitoring tasks that are frequently used with non-human animals fail to demonstrate the presence of metacognitive abilities.

A Developmental Study of Mindreading Abilities in Preschoolers using Director Task

A Developmental Study of Mindreading Abilities in Preschoolers using Director Task

Symptom severity and mindreading in narcissistic personality disorder.

BackgroundGrandiose narcissism has been associated with poor ability to understand one’s own mental states and the mental states of others. In particular, two manifestations of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) can be explained by poor mindreading abilities: absence of symptomatic subjective distress and lack of empathy.MethodsWe conducted two studies to investigate the relationships between mindreading capacity, symptomatic subjective distress and narcissistic personality. In the first study (N = 246), we compared mindreading capacities and symptomatic distress in three outpatient samples: narcissistic patients (NPD); patients with other Personality Disorders (PD); patients without PD. In the second study (N = 1357), we explored the relationships between symptomatic distress, mindreading and specific NPD criteria.ResultsIn the first study, the NPD patients showed poorer mindreading than the patients without PD and comparable to patients with other PDs. Symptomatic subjective distress in the narcissistic group was less severe than in the other PDs group and comparable to the group without PDs. However, no relationship emerged between mindreading and symptomatic subjective distress. In the second study, taking the clinical sample as a whole, symptomatic distress appeared negatively linked to grandiosity traits, while mindreading scores were negatively linked to empathy.ConclusionsNPD showed specific mindreading impairments. However, mindreading capacity did not appear to be directly connected with subjective distress, but did appear to be connected with specific aspects of narcissistic pathology.

Can you spot a liar? Deception, mindreading, and the case of autism spectrum disorder.

Detection of deception is of fundamental importance for everyday social life and might require “mindreading” (the ability to represent others’ mental states). People with diminished mindreading, such as those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), might be at risk of manipulation because of lie detection difficulties. In Experiment 1, performance among 216 neurotypical adults on a realistic lie detection paradigm was significantly negatively associated with number of ASD traits, but not with mindreading ability. Bayesian analyses complemented null hypothesis significance testing and suggested the data supported the alternative hypothesis in this key respect. Cross validation of results was achieved by randomly splitting the full sample into two subsamples of 108 and rerunning analyses. The association between lie detection and ASD traits held in both subsamples, showing the reliability of findings. In Experiment 2, lie detection was significantly impaired in 27 adults with a diagnosis of ASD relative to 27 matched comparison participants. Results suggest that people with ASD (or ASD traits) may be particularly vulnerable to manipulation and may benefit from lie detection training. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1129–1137. © 2018 The Authors Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Lay SummaryDetection of deception is of fundamental importance for everyday social life. People with diminished understanding of other minds, such as those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), might be at risk of manipulation because of lie detection difficulties. We found that lie detection ability was related to how many ASD traits neurotypical people manifested and also was significantly diminished among adults with a full diagnosis of ASD.