Mindreading Capacities Research Articles

Influences of heart rate feedback and autistic traits on affective mindreading

Although mindreading is an important prerequisite for successful social interactions, the underlying mechanisms are still matter of debate. It is unclear, for example, if inferring others’ and own mental states are distinct processes or are based on a common mechanism. Using an affect-induction experimental set-up with an acoustic heart rate feedback that addresses affective mindreading in self and others, we investigated if non-autistic study participants relied on similar information for self- and other-directed mindreading. We assumed that due to altered mindreading capacities in autism, mainly individuals with low autistic traits would focus on additional sensory cues, such as heart rate, to infer their own and their gambling partner’s affective states. Our analyses showed that the interpretation of a heart rate signal differed in self- and other-directed mindreading trials. This effect was modulated by autistic traits suggesting that individuals with higher autistic traits might not have interpreted the heart rate feedback for gambling partner ratings and differentiated less between self- and other-directed mindreading trials. We discuss these results in the context of a common mechanism underlying self- and other-directed mindreading and hypothesize that the weighting of internal and external sensory information might contribute to how we make sense of our and others’ mental states.

Is recursive "mindreading" really an exception to limitations on recursive thinking?

The ability to mindread recursively-for example, by thinking what person 1 thinks person 2 thinks person 3 thinks-is a prime example of recursive thinking in which one process, representation, or idea becomes embedded within a similar one. It has also been suggested that mindreading is an exceptional example, with five recursive steps commonly observed for mindreading, in comparison with just one or two in other domains. However, conceptual analysis of existing recursive mindreading tasks suggests that conclusions about exceptional mindreading are insecure. Revised tasks were devised to provide a more rigorous test of recursive mindreading capacity. Study 1 (N = 76) found significantly worse performance at level-5 recursive mindreading on the revised tasks (17% correct) compared with the original tasks (80% correct), and no effect of moderate financial bonuses for good performance. Study 2 (N = 74) replicated poor performance at level-5 recursive mindreading on the revised tasks (15% correct) in the absence of bonuses, but found better performance (45% correct) when participants were offered large bonuses for accuracy, encouraged to take as much time as needed, and assisted with a strategy for recursive reasoning. These findings suggest that, like recursive thinking in other domains, recursive mindreading is effortful and limited. We discuss how the proposed role for high levels of recursive mindreading in communication, culture, and literature might be reconciled with these limitations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Sharing Experiences in Infancy: From Primary Intersubjectivity to Shared Intentionality.

We contrast two theses that make different assumptions about the developmental onset of human-unique sociality. The primary intersubjectivity thesis (PIT) argues that humans relate to each other in distinct ways from the beginning of life, as is shown by newborns' participation in face-to-face encounters or “primary intersubjectivity.” According to this thesis, humans' innate relational capacity is the seedbed from which all subsequent social-emotional and social-cognitive developments continuously emerge. The shared intentionality thesis (SIT) states that human-unique forms of interaction develop at 9–12 months of age, when infants put their heads together with others in acts of object-focused joint attention and simple collaborative activities. According to this thesis, human-unique cognition emerges rapidly with the advent of mind-reading capacities that evolved specifically for the purpose of coordination. In this paper, we first contrast the two theses and then sketch the outlines of an account that unifies their strengths. This unified account endorses the PIT's recognition of the fundamental importance of primary intersubjectivity. Any act of sharing experiences is founded on the communicative capacity that is already displayed by young infants in primary intersubjectivity. At the same time, we question the PIT's interpretation that dyadic encounters have the triadic structure of joint attention. Lastly, we draw on empirical work on the development of joint attention, imitation, and social referencing that serves as evidence that primary intersubjectivity continuously unfolds into the capacity for triadic joint attention.

Into Your (S)Kin: Toward a Comprehensive Conception of Empathy.

This paper argues for a comprehensive conception of empathy as comprising epistemic, affective, and motivational elements and introduces the ancient Stoic theory of attachment (Greek, oikeiōsis) as a model for describing the embodied, emotional response to others that we take to be distinctive of empathy. Our argument entails that in order to provide a suitable conceptual framework for the interdisciplinary study of empathy one must extend the scope of recent “simulationalist” and “enactivist” accounts of empathy in two important respects. First, against the enactivist assumption that human mindreading capacities primarily rely on an immediate, quasi-perceptual understanding of other’s intentional states, we draw on Alfred Schutz’ analysis of social understanding to argue that reflective types of understanding play a distinct, but equally fundamental role in empathic engagements. Second, we insist that empathy also involves an affective response toward the other and their situation (as the empathizer perceives this). We suggest analyzing this response in terms of the Stoic concepts of attachment, concern, and a fundamental type of prosocial motivation, that can best be described as an “extended partiality.” By way of conclusion, we integrate the above concepts into a comprehensive conceptual framework for the study of empathy and briefly relate them to current debates about empathic perception and prosocial motivation. The result, we argue, is an account that stays neutral with regard to the exact nature of the processes involved in producing empathy and can therefore accommodate discussion across theoretical divides—e.g., those between enactivist, simulationalist, and so-called theory-theorist approaches.

Do Competitive Contexts Affect Mindreading Performance?

Mindreading is contingent upon interpersonal context. Little is known about how competitive contexts influence mindreading skills. The idea was that the capacity to think about mental states would decline when individuals experiencing failure in competition. This study aims to assess effects of a competitive experience (a computer competitive PC game) on a sample of healthy subjects (119 participants). The sample was divided into two sub-samples. The experimental group underwent an experience of failure, consisting in a PC game of logic against a hypothetical opponent. The control group was required instead only to discuss past personal experiences of competitive interactions. The Metacognitive Assessment Interview was administered to each sub-sample for evaluating mindreading capacities. Self-report tests were additionally provided for evaluation of trait-based dispositions: self-esteem, perfectionism, narcissism. Results supported our hypothesis: induction of sense of failure compromises ability to describe one’s own mental states and mental states of others. This effect was more pronounced in the domain of self-reflection. Results remained significant after controlling for self-esteem, perfectionism, and narcissism. We discuss possible clinical implications of these findings and the importance of evaluating mindreading capacities under the pressure of social rank as well as of other social motive.

The Social Cover View: a Non-epistemic Approach to Mindreading

Mindreading capacity has been widely understood as the human ability to gain knowledge about the inner processes and states of others that bring about the behavior of these agents. This paper argues against this epistemic view of mindreading on the basis of different empirical studies in linguistics and social and developmental psychology: we are systematically biased in attributing mental states, and many everyday uses of mental ascription sentences do not reflect an epistemic function in our social interactions. We introduce an alternative view of mental ascriptions, the social cover view, which is consistent with the evidence. The social cover view holds that the main function of mental ascriptions is to cover the social status and reputation of an agent rather than to gain knowledge about her inner processes and states. Finally, we discuss two possible objections to our proposal.

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.

Sensitivity to Social Contingency in Adults with High-Functioning Autism during Computer-Mediated Embodied Interaction.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be understood as a social interaction disorder. This makes the emerging “second-person approach” to social cognition a more promising framework for studying ASD than classical approaches focusing on mindreading capacities in detached, observer-based arrangements. According to the second-person approach, embodied, perceptual, and embedded or interactive capabilities are also required for understanding others, and these are hypothesized to be compromised in ASD. We therefore recorded the dynamics of real-time sensorimotor interaction in pairs of control participants and participants with High-Functioning Autism (HFA), using the minimalistic human-computer interface paradigm known as “perceptual crossing” (PC). We investigated whether HFA is associated with impaired detection of social contingency, i.e., a reduced sensitivity to the other’s responsiveness to one’s own behavior. Surprisingly, our analysis reveals that, at least under the conditions of this highly simplified, computer-mediated, embodied form of social interaction, people with HFA perform equally well as controls. This finding supports the increasing use of virtual reality interfaces for helping people with ASD to better compensate for their social disabilities. Further dynamical analyses are necessary for a better understanding of the mechanisms that are leading to the somewhat surprising results here obtained.

Let's Talk: Parents' Mental Talk (Not Mind-Mindedness or Mindreading Capacity) Predicts Children's False Belief Understanding.

Although one might expect parents' mind-mindedness (MM; the propensity to view children as mental agents) to relate to everyday mental-state talk (MST) and theory-of-mind capacity, evidence to support this view is lacking. In addition, both the uniqueness and the specificity of relations between parental MM, parental MST, and children's false belief understanding (FBU) are open to question. To address these three gaps, this study tracked 117 preschoolers (60 boys) and their parents across a 13-month period (Mage =3.94years, SD=0.53, at Time 1). Parental MM, MST, and theory-of-mind capacity showed little overlap. Both MM and MST were weakly associated with children's concurrent FBU, but in line with social constructivist accounts, only MST predicted later FBU.

Adaptive Flexibility, Cooperation, and Prosocial Motivations: The Emotional Foundations of Becoming Human

ABSTRACTHumans are highly motivated to cooperate, share, and help others. The evidence for this claim comes from examining prosocial behaviors as they show up very early in development, and by systematic comparisons between young children and mankind’s closest great ape relatives. Highly cooperative and social species that care for kin and nonkin members of their group are rare in nature and call for an evolutionary explanation. Based on the work of Michael Tomasello and others, I offer a possible explanation based on a two-phase model. The first phase of the evolution of cooperation and sociability is induced by climate change taking place during a critical period of human evolution. Climate variability produced shifts from wet, monsoon landscapes to dry and arid landscapes in East Africa, the home of many of humanity’s ancestors. Shifting environmental conditions produced selective pressures favoring adaptive flexibility and forced cooperation and interdependence among our hominin ancestors, who had to search for food (cooperative foraging) and protect each other from predators. Forced interdependence came together with two biosocial adaptations: a cooperative form of raising young children (cooperative breeding) and long-term mating patterns (pair bonding). These biosocial adaptations help explain how the species might have begun to develop emotionally modern intersubjective mind-reading capacities. During a second phase of the evolution of cooperation, the emergence of shared social norms, social reputations, the cumulative effects of cultural knowledge passed on over many generations, and cultural differences produced a new form of evolution: cultural evolution. In turn, cultural evolution produced a new cycle of innovations consisting of symbolic capacities and language. When it comes to psychotherapy, the same conditions that made one human—adaptive flexibility, cooperation, helping others and mutual enjoyment in sharing—are the same conditions that make for a strong therapeutic alliance.

Morality Without Mindreading

AbstractCan animals behave morally if they can't mindread? Does morality require mindreading capacities? Moral psychologists believe that mindreading is contingently involved in moral judgements. Moral philosophers argue that moral behaviour necessarily requires the possession of mindreading capacities. In this paper, I argue that while the former may be right, the latter are mistaken. Using the example of empathy, I show that animals with no mindreading capacities could behave on the basis of emotions that possess an identifiable moral content. Therefore, at least one type of moral motivation does not require mindreading. This means that, a priori, non‐mindreading animals can be moral.

The Situational Structure of Primate Beliefs

Abstract This paper develops the situational model of primate beliefs from the Prior-Lurz line of thought. There is a strong skepticism concerning primate beliefs in the analytic tradition which holds that beliefs have to be propositional and non-human animals do not have them (e.g., Davidson 1975, 1982). The response offered in this paper is twofold. First, two arguments against the propositional model as applied to other animals are put forward: an a priori argument from referential opacity and an empirical argument from varieties of working memory. Second, the Prior-Lurz situational model based on state of affairs as opposed to propositions is introduced and defended with two significant modifications. With this model of primate beliefs we can make progress in understanding how other primates can have certain mindreading capacity.

Pragmatics as Metacognitive Control.

The term “pragmatics” is often used to refer without distinction, on one hand, to the contextual selection of interpretation norms and, on the other hand, to the context-sensitive processes guided by these norms. Pragmatics in the first acception depends on language-independent contextual factors that can, but need not, involve Theory of Mind; in the second acception, pragmatics is a language-specific metacognitive process, which may unfold at an unconscious level without involving any mental state (meta-)representation. Distinguishing between these two kinds of ways context drives the interpretation of communicative stimuli helps dissolve the dispute between proponents of an entirely Gricean pragmatics and those who claim that some pragmatic processes do not depend on mind-reading capacities. According to the model defended in this paper, the typology of pragmatic processes is not entirely determined by a hierarchy of meanings, but by contextually set norms of interpretation.

Animal sentience: The other-minds problem

The only feelings we can feel are our own. When it comes to the feelings of others, we can only infer them, based on their behavior — unless they tell us. This is the other- minds problem. Within our own species, thanks to language, this problem arises only for states in which people cannot speak (infancy, aphasia, sleep, anaesthesia, coma). Our species also has a uniquely powerful empathic or mind-reading capacity: We can (sometimes) perceive from the behavior of others when they are in states like our own. Our inferences have also been systematized and operationalized in biobehavioral science and supplemented by cognitive neuroimagery. Together, these make the other-minds problem within our own species a relatively minor one. But we cohabit the planet with other species, most of them very different from our own, and none of them able to talk. Inferring whether and what they feel is important not only for scientific but also for ethical reasons, because where feelings are felt, they can also be hurt. As animals are at long last beginning to be accorded legal status and protection as sentient beings, our new journal Animal Sentience, will be devoted to exploring in depth what, how and why organisms feel. Individual articles (and sometimes precis of books) addressing different species' sentient and cognitive capacities will each be accorded open peer commentary, consisting of multiple shorter articles, both invited and freely submitted ones, by specialists from many disciplines, each elaborating, applying, supplementing or criticizing the content of the target article, along with responses from the target author(s). The members of the nonhuman species under discussion will not be able to join in the conversation, but their spokesmen and advocates, the specialists who know them best, will. The inaugural issue launches with the all-important question (for fish) of whether fish can feel pain.

Metacognitive feelings, self-ascriptions and metal actions

The main aim of this paper is to clarify the relation between epistemic feel- ings, mental action, and self-ascription. Acting mentally and/or thinking about one’s mental states are two possible outcomes of epistemic or metacognitive feelings. Our mental actions are often guided by our E-feelings, such as when we check what we just saw based on a feeling of visual uncertainty; but thought about our own perceptual states and capacities can also be triggered by the same E-feelings. The first section of the paper presents Dokic’s argument for the insufficiency of the “ascent routine” to account for non-transparent cases of self-ascription, as well as his account of E-feelings. The second section then presents a two-level model of metacognition that builds on Dokic’s account and my own view of the issue. The two-level model links E-feelings to a mindreading capacity in order to account for non-transparent self-ascriptions. Finally, the third section develops a deeper characterization of the relation among E-feelings, mental action, and self-ascription of mental states based on epistemic rules. In the context of self-knowledge, these remarks suggest the existence of means of forming self-ascriptions other than the ascent routine.

Einfühlen und Verstehen

How do we understand other minds? The current debate uses the iridescent term “empathy” to explain our quite different mindreading capacities. Since no alternatives seemed to be available the discussion has been mostly in a deadlock between “simulation theory” and “theory theory”. Only recently the relevance of phenomenological findings on the issue has been brought forward. In this paper Husserl’s two concepts of “Einfühlung”, as developed in the second volume of his Ideas, are set against the background of the latest discussion. Husserl’s explanation of empathy in terms of analogical experience highlights the transcendental role of empathy in the context of constitution. At the same time it may solve some of the many riddles left by the recent debate.

Mindreading in Infancy

AbstractVarious dichotomies have been proposed to characterize the nature and development of human mindreading capacities, especially in light of recent evidence of mindreading in infants aged 7 to 18 months. This article will examine these suggestions, arguing that none is currently supported by the evidence. Rather, the data support a modular account of the domain‐specific component of basic mindreading capacities. This core component is present in infants from a very young age and does not alter fundamentally thereafter. What alters with development are the interactions between core mindreading and other systems, including executive systems, and forms of learning that do not require radical conceptual change.

Social behavior in the "Age of Empathy"?-A social scientist's perspective on current trends in the behavioral sciences.

Recently, several behavioral sciences became increasingly interested in investigating biological and evolutionary foundations of (human) social behavior. In this light, prosocial behavior is seen as a core element of human nature. A central role within this perspective plays the “social brain” that is not only able to communicate with the environment but rather to interact directly with other brains via neuronal mind reading capacities such as empathy. From the perspective of a sociologist, this paper investigates what “social” means in contemporary behavioral and particularly brain sciences. It will be discussed what “social” means in the light of social neuroscience and a glance into the history of social psychology and the brain sciences will show that two thought traditions come together in social neuroscience, combining an individualistic and an evolutionary notion of the “social.” The paper concludes by situating current research on prosocial behavior in broader social discourses about sociality and society, suggesting that to naturalize prosocial aspects in human life is a current trend in today's behavioral sciences and beyond.

Mindreading underlies metacognition

AbstractThis response defends the view that human metacognition results from us turning our mindreading capacities upon ourselves, and that our access to our own propositional attitudes is through interpretation rather than introspection. Relevant evidence is considered, including that deriving from studies of childhood development and other animal species. Also discussed are data suggesting dissociations between metacognitive and mindreading capacities, especially in autism and schizophrenia.

Is feeling pain just mindreading? Our mind-brain constructs realistic knowledge of ourselves

AbstractCarruthers claims that “our knowledge of our own attitudes results from turning our mindreading capacities upon ourselves” (target article, Abstract). This may be true in many cases. But like other constructivist claims, it fails to explain occasions when constructed knowledge is accurate, like a well-supported scientific theory. People can know their surrounding world and to some extent themselves. Accurate self-knowledge is firmly established for both somatosensory and social pain.