The ease and extent of recursive mindreading, across implicit and explicit tasks
The ease and extent of recursive mindreading, across implicit and explicit tasks
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DOI：
10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.01.004
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发表时间：
2015-07-01
影响因子：
5.1
通讯作者：
Scott-Phillips, Thomas C.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
O'Grady, Cathleen;Kliesch, Christian;Scott-Phillips, Thomas C.
递归读心术是将心理表征嵌入其他心理表征的能力，例如持有关于信念的信念。一个先进的能力，娱乐递归嵌入的心理状态是一致的进化观点，强调社会性和社会认知在人类进化中的重要性：高水平的递归读心术被认为是参与几个独特的人类行为和制度，如通信，宗教，讲故事。然而，尽管在心理理论的术语下对第一层次的读心术进行了大量的研究，但人类递归读心术的能力相对来说研究不足，并且现有的研究在这个主题上存在重大的方法论缺陷。在这里，我们通过实验表明，人类的递归读心能力比以前所显示的要先进得多。具体来说，我们表明，人类能够mindread至少七个层次的嵌入，无论是明确的，通过语言描述，和隐含的，通过观察社会互动。然而，我们的数据表明，读心术可能更容易刺激时，提出含蓄，而不是明确的。我们认为，先进的读心能力是预期在一个极端的社会物种，如我们自己，在那里的能力，推理他人的心理状态是一个必不可少的，无处不在的和适应性的组成部分，日常生活。(C)2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Recursive mindreading is the ability to embed mental representations inside other mental representations e.g. to hold beliefs about beliefs about beliefs. An advanced ability to entertain recursively embedded mental states is consistent with evolutionary perspectives that emphasise the importance of sociality and social cognition in human evolution: high levels of recursive mindreading are argued to be involved in several distinctive human behaviours and institutions, such as communication, religion, and story-telling. However, despite a wealth of research on first-level mindreading under the term Theory of Mind, the human ability for recursive mindreading is relatively understudied, and existing research on the topic has significant methodological flaws. Here we show experimentally that human recursive mindreading abilities are far more advanced than has previously been shown. Specifically, we show that humans are able to mindread to at least seven levels of embedding, both explicitly, through linguistic description, and implicitly, through observing social interactions. However, our data suggest that mindreading may be easier when stimuli are presented implicitly rather than explicitly. We argue that advanced mindreading abilities are to be expected in an extremely social species such as our own, where the ability to reason about others' mental states is an essential, ubiquitous and adaptive component of everyday life. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.