The nature and extent of adults' egocentric bias when reasoning about what others see and believe.

作为成年人，我们经常通过描述他人的心理状态来预测和解释他人的行为，比如这个人能看到什么，他们相信什么，他们想要什么：例如，女孩打开冰箱，因为她想吃冰淇淋，并相信冰箱里有冰淇淋。这种能力被称为“心理理论”，因为成年人会预测他人的心理状态和行为。然而，虽然成年人能够预测他人的心理状态，但他们在做出这些预测时容易出错。这个项目将测试为什么成年人会犯这些错误，以及这些错误是否会更频繁地发生，这取决于预测的类型和性质。为了调查成年人所犯的错误，该项目侧重于成年人在考虑他人观点时所犯的错误，因为这种能力也需要推理他人的信仰。因此，观点采择中的错误特别能提供信息，因为它们可能会导致其他形式的心理状态归因中的错误。因此，该项目将涉及测试成年人在一系列的观点采择任务，以调查的性质和认知过程中潜在的错误。第一个目标是测试是否由成年人在观点采择任务中所犯的错误的数量是由所需的观点采择类型的影响。有两个层次的观点采择，我们的目标是比较这两个层次之间的成年人的表现。一种简单的观点采择包括考虑到另一个人可以看到什么（第一级观点采择）。另一种更复杂的观点采择方式是考虑到他人对事物的看法可能与你的看法不同（例如，吉尔可能会在滤色器后面看到一个白色球，就好像它是一个蓝色球; 2级观点采择）。这是很重要的，因为在每种类型的观点采择之间的错误之间的比较将表明是否错误是链接到如何复杂的观点采择是。第二个目标是测试成人在观点采择任务中所犯的错误是否仅限于视觉的观点采择。以前的研究只测试了成年人在推理别人能看到什么时是否会出错。目前还不清楚成年人在推理别人听到的东西时是否会犯错误。测试错误是否仅限于一种感觉，这对我们了解这些错误的性质至关重要。此外，我们的测试将提供高度需要验证目前的假设，即成人在推理视觉透视时所表现出的错误是关于一般的透视的信息。第三个目标是检验成人所犯的错误是否是关于心理状态的推理所独有的。为了解决这个问题，我们将向成年人提出一些任务，这些任务不需要归因于心理状态，但反映了观点采择任务的特定认知要求。观点采择任务的两个组成部分可能导致成人的错误。首先，参与者必须忽略自己的观点。第二，参与者需要从另一个人的角度来表现所表现的东西（元表现）。因此，我们的目标是测试是否成人的错误是由于推理的心理状态，或由于这两个认知过程中的错误，这是固有的心理状态归因任务，但这不是特别需要的心理状态归因。通过测试所有三个目标，我们希望实现一个全面的了解成人的错误，在观点采择任务，将告知我们这些错误的性质。这将对对心理理论感兴趣的学术界产生重要影响，并可能对测试脑损伤患者是否存在心理理论缺陷以及需要观点采择的专业产生实际影响

As adult humans we regularly predict and explain others' actions by describing their mental states such as what that person can see, what they believe and what they want: e.g., the girl opened the fridge because she wanted an ice cream and believed there was an ice cream in the fridge. This ability is called a 'theory of mind' because adults generate predictions about others' mental states and behaviours. However, while adults are capable of predicting others' mental states they are prone to errors when making these predictions. This project will test why adults make these errors and whether these errors occur more often depending on the type and nature of the prediction being made. To investigate the errors made by adults' the project focuses on the errors made by adults when taking into account another's perspective because this ability is also required for reasoning about another's belief. Consequently, errors in perspective taking are particularly informative because they are likely to lead to errors in other forms of mental state attribution. Thus, the project will involve testing adults on a range of perspective taking tasks to investigate the nature and the cognitive processes underlying their errors.The first objective is to test whether the number of errors made by adults during perspective taking tasks is influenced by the type of perspective taking required. There are two levels of perspective taking and we aim to compare adults' performance between these two levels. A simple form of perspective taking involves taking into account what another person can see (level 1 perspective taking). A more complicated form of perspective taking involves taking into account that how another person sees something can differ to how you see it (for instance, Jill may see a white ball behind a colour filter as if it were a blue ball; level 2 perspective taking). This is important because a comparison between the errors made on each type of perspective taking would indicate whether errors are linked to how complex the perspective taking is.The second objective is to test whether errors made by adults during perspective taking tasks are limited to visual perspective taking. Previous research has only tested whether adults make errors when reasoning about what other people can see. It is yet unclear whether adults make errors when reasoning about what others hear. Testing whether errors are limited to one sense is crucial in informing us about the nature of these errors. Moreover, our tests will provide highly needed validation of the current assumption that the errors shown by adults when reasoning about visual perspective are informative about perspective taking in general. The third objective is to test whether the errors made by adults are unique to reasoning about mental states. To address this we will present adults with tasks that do not require attributing a mental state but that reflect specific cognitive requirements of perspective taking tasks. Two components of perspective taking tasks may be leading to adults' errors. Firstly, participants are required to ignore their own perspective. Secondly, participants need to represent what is represented in another person's perspective (meta-representation). Consequently, we aim to test whether adults' errors are due to reasoning about mental states or due to errors in these two cognitive processes which are inherent in mental state attribution tasks but which are not specifically required for mental state attribution.By testing all three objectives we hope to achieve a comprehensive understanding of adults' errors in perspective taking tasks that will inform us about the nature of these errors. This will have important implications for the academic community interested in theory of mind and may have practical ramifications both for testing whether patients with brain injuries have deficits in theory of mind and for the professions that require perspective taking