Attributing False Beliefs About Object Identity

[K. Loganathan]

 I (jrf) have a PDF of this article. If you want it, send an email to jay.feierman84@... and ask for the Low article by the first author's last name and the title.

Regards,

Jay R. Feierman

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/24/3/305.short

Psychological Science 24: 305-311, March 2013; doi:10.1177/0956797612451469

Attributing False Beliefs About Object Identity Reveals a Signature Blind Spot in Humans’ Efficient Mind-Reading System

Jason Low and Joseph Watts

How can human beings make significant but cognitively taxing inferences about others’ beliefs yet also effectively “mind read” in fast-moving social situations? We tested the idea that humans have two mind-reading systems: a flexible system and an efficient system that can make fast calculations because it has natural blind spots to the kinds of input it processes. We showed that the automatic gaze anticipations of 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and adults displayed a signature blind spot specific to calculating an actor’s false belief about object identity—a calculation that required the complex understanding that an object can be interpreted differently depending on one’s visual perspective. Participants’ deliberate verbal inferences demonstrated significant flexibility in calculations of another person’s beliefs. Our results show that quick, efficient mind reading eschews conceptual sophistication.

theory of mind cognitive development social cognition