The pull of reality: Egocentric bias in adult theory of mind

这个项目调查了我们理解他人对世界的信念的基本认知过程，特别是当这些信念与我们自己的不同时。人类一直被描述为“以自我为中心的生物”：即使在成年后，我们也常常认为其他人与我们一样对这个世界有着相同的认知、欲望和知识。然而，导致成年人犯这种错误的确切认知过程，特别是在思考其他人的信仰时，目前还没有被很好地理解。心理学领域的研究传统上集中在5岁以下儿童的自我中心主义上。年幼的孩子在报告另一个人有与当前现实不同的信仰时表现出极大的困难。想象一下，你的朋友看着你在厨房的橱柜里放了一些巧克力，然后离开了房间。当她出去的时候，你把巧克力放到冰箱里。如果被问到“她认为巧克力在哪里”，作为一个成年人，你可以相对容易地回答：“在橱柜里”，即使你知道它现在在冰箱里(你的“真实信念”或“当前知识”)。然而，年幼的孩子通常会回答“冰箱”，就好像他们希望缺席的朋友也分享他们目前的知识一样。对这个错误的许多解释都集中在幼儿不成熟的能力上，他们抑制了自己目前的真实信念或知识。这些理论上的描述声称，思考一个你知道是错误的信念，从根本上包括抑制你知道的是真的，而这个过程正是年幼的孩子们所挣扎的。这些研究预测，即使在成年人中，他们可以很容易地报告另一个人的错误信念，处理错误信念就像在儿童中一样，需要成功地抑制对自己当前知识的自我中心偏见。在过去的十年里，心理学见证了越来越多的关于成年人将信念和其他精神状态归因于其他人的过程的研究。了解成年人如何处理信念，不仅对于理解我们作为成年人如何能够相互社交至关重要，而且对于理解儿童发展这些能力所需的发展变化也是至关重要的。最近，许多研究人员试图解决成年人在处理错误信念时是否像许多发展理论所预测的那样，表现出对自己知识的自我中心偏见。然而，到目前为止，研究还没有为这个长期存在的问题提供明确的答案。在这个项目中，我们将使用鼠标跟踪的新技术来解决这个问题。鼠标跟踪使研究人员能够在参与者做出决定时测量在线对不同可能反应的吸引力。虽然它已经在心理学的一系列领域中得到了应用，但在心理理论研究中还没有得到广泛的应用。我们将使用这项技术来衡量成年人在被要求报告他人的错误信念时，是否对自己目前的知识表现出自我中心的偏见。在4个实验中，我们将使用鼠标跟踪来：(I)建立信念加工中自我中心偏见的直接测量，这种偏见被认为是成年人在处理另一个人的错误信念时存在的。(Ii)调查这种以自我为中心的偏见的性质，以了解信念加工的哪些具体方面导致成人出现这种偏见。这个项目测试了成人和儿童长期存在的信念加工理论解释的关键假设，因此将是研究社会认知的心理学家、神经学家和哲学家的主要兴趣。此外，通过改善我们对成人信念处理的理解，从长远来看，这个项目也将使那些与通常难以理解他人信念的群体合作的人受益，例如自闭症和后天性脑损伤。

This project investigates the fundamental cognitive processes underlying our ability to understand other people's beliefs about the world, specifically when those beliefs are different to our own. Human beings have been described as "egocentric creatures": even as adults we often assume that other people share our perceptions, desires and knowledge about the world. However, the exact cognitive processes that lead to such errors in adults, in particular when thinking about other people's beliefs, are currently not well understood.Research within psychology has traditionally focused on the egocentricism of children under 5 years of age. Young children show a profound difficulty in reporting that another person has a belief that differs from current reality. Imagine your friend watches you put some chocolate in the kitchen cupboard, and the leaves the room. While she is out, you then move the chocolate into the fridge. If asked "where does she think the chocolate is", as an adult you could relatively easily reply: "in the cupboard", even though you know it is now in the fridge (your "true belief" or "current knowledge"). Young children, however, typically will reply "the fridge", as though they expect their absent friend to also share their current knowledge.Many explanations of this error focus on the immature ability of young children to inhibit their own current true belief, or knowledge. These theoretical accounts claim that thinking about a belief that you know to be false fundamentally involves inhibiting what you know to be true, and it is this process that young children struggle with. These accounts predict that even in adults, who can report another person's false belief with ease, processing the false belief, just as in children, requires successful inhibition of an egocentric bias towards one's current knowledge.In the last decade, psychology has seen increasing research into the processes involved when adults attribute beliefs and other mental states to other people. Understanding how adults process beliefs is of key importance for understanding not only how we as adults are able to socially interact with each other, but also for understanding the developmental changes required for children to develop these abilities. A number of researchers have recently attempted to address whether adults show an egocentric bias towards their own knowledge when processing a false belief, as predicted by many developmental theories. Research to date, however, has failed to provide a definitive answer to this long-standing question.In this project, we will address this issue by using the novel technique of mouse-tracking. Mouse-tracking allows researchers to measure the on-line attraction to different possible responses while participants make a decision. While it has been used across a range of fields in psychology, it has yet to be widely used within theory of mind research. We will use this technique to measure whether adults show an egocentric bias towards their own current knowledge when they are asked to report the false belief of another person. Across 4 experiments, we will use mouse-tracking to: (i) Establish a direct measure of the egocentric bias in belief processing that has been claimed to be present when adults process another person's false belief. (ii) Investigate the nature of this egocentric bias in order to understand what specific aspects of belief processing causes it in adults. This project tests critical assumptions of long-standing theoretical accounts of belief processing in both adults and children, and as such will be of key interest to psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers investigating social cognition. Furthermore, by improving our understanding of adult belief processing, in the long-term this project will also benefit those working with groups that typically have difficulty understanding other people's beliefs, such as in autism and acquired brain injury.