The scope and development of implicit Theory of Mind: The interplay of cognition, language, and the brain

长期以来，人们一直认为心理理论(Tom)是在学龄前几年缓慢出现的，基于中央认知和语言资源。然而，新的研究发现，即使在婴儿时期，内隐心理理论任务的能力也令人惊讶。发展认知神经科学的一大挑战是如何描述这种早期能力，它与外显心理理论和中枢认知和语言资源的关系，以及它的神经基础。我们的项目通过研究内隐TOM的个体发生轨迹、认知和神经基础与语言和领域一般认知的发展关系来应对这一挑战。在第一个资助阶段，我们进行了一项纵向研究，以期将2岁和3岁的内隐心理理论与既往语言经验或一般认知能力发展的影响联系起来。为了建立可靠和敏感的结果测量，我们专注于典型的内隐TOM任务，这些任务研究婴儿的期望，代理人将如何在错误信念的基础上采取行动。令人惊讶的是，我们的发现揭示了这些任务的复制性很差，并且没有收敛的效度--这与最近来自世界各地的许多实验室的证据一致，这些证据共同对这些任务的适用性提出了严重的质疑。我们目前正在进行一项纵向研究，测试这些内隐任务是否利用了个体差异，这些差异可以用前述语言经验和领域一般认知能力对内隐任务的影响来解释。在第二个资助期，我们将采取一种新颖而全面的方法，从一个新的角度关注内隐心理理论，通过考察偏心干扰现象。这是一个强有力的观察到的现象，在他们自己的判断中，受试者受到他们自动共同代表的其他代理人的观点的影响。例如，当另一个对对象有不一致观点的代理在场时，参与者检测和计算对象的速度较慢。偏心干扰任务有许多重要的优势：它们提供了内隐心理理论的细粒度测量，允许对语言和执行任务要求进行严格的实验控制，以及外显和内隐任务形式的最小对比，这使得它们非常适合用于神经成像研究。结合行为和神经科学的方法，我们可以分析不同形式的内隐心理理论的认知和神经基础，并获得对内隐心理理论的潜在过程及其与语言和领域一般认知能力的关系的重要见解。总体而言，该项目将有助于更好地理解内隐心理理论的性质和基础。通过与其他CROSS项目的密切合作，它将有助于更好地理解语言、领域一般和领域特定认知发展与大脑的相互作用。

It was long assumed that Theory of Mind (ToM) emerges slowly over the preschool years, based on central cognitive and linguistic resources. New research, however, has revealed surprising competence in implicit ToM tasks even in infancy. A big challenge of developmental cognitive neuroscience is how to characterize this early competence, its relation to explicit ToM and central cognitive and linguistic resources, and its neural foundations. Our project addresses this challenge by studying the ontogenetic trajectories, cognitive and neural foundations of implicit ToM in relation to the development of language and domain-general cognition. In the first funding period, we conducted a longitudinal study in order to relate implicit ToM at 2 and 3 years to influences of previous linguistic experience or the development of general cognitive capacities. To establish reliable and sensitive outcome measures, we focused on typical implicit ToM tasks that study infants’ expectations how an agent will act on the basis of a false belief. Surprisingly, our findings revealed poor replicability and no converging validity of these tasks – in line with recent evidence from numerous labs worldwide that together cast serious doubts on the suitability of these tasks.We are currently testing in a longitudinal study whether these implicit tasks, though failing to document competence at the group level, still tap individual variation that can be explained by foregoing influence of linguistic experience and domain-general cognitive capacities on implicit ToM.In the second funding period, we will take a novel and comprehensive approach focusing on implicit ToM from a new angle by investigating the phenomenon of altercentric interference. This is the robustly observed phenomenon that in their own judgments, subjects are influenced by the perspective of other agents that they automatically co-represent. For example, participants are slower to detect and count objects when another agent is present who has an incongruent perspective on these objects. Altercentric interference tasks have a number of crucial advantages: they supply fine-grained measures of implicit ToM, allow tight experimental control of linguistic and executive task demands and minimal contrasts of explicit and implicit task formats, which makes them perfectly suited for use in neuroimaging studies.Combining behavioral and neuroscientific approaches allows us to analyze the cognitive and neural bases of different forms of ToM across development and gain crucial insights into the underlying processes of implicit ToM and their relation to language and domain-general cognitive capacities.Overall, the project will help to better understand the nature and foundations of implicit ToM, and through close cooperation with other projects of CROSSING it will contribute to a better understanding of the interplay of linguistic, domain-general, and domain-specific cognitive development and the brain.