Direct and indirect measures of Level-2 perspective-taking in children and adults.

Studies with infants show divergence between performance on theory of mind tasks depending on whether direct or indirect measures are used. It has been suggested that direct measures assess a flexible but cognitively demanding ability to reason about the minds of others, whereas indirect measures assess distinct processes which afford more efficient but less flexible theory of mind abilities (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009). This leads to the prediction that performance on indirect measures should be subject to signature limits. The current study tested whether the Level-1/Level-2 distinction might constitute one such limit. The study adapted a task that has shown evidence of Level-1 perspective-taking on both direct and indirect measures (Samson, Apperly, Braithwaite, Andrews, & Bodley-Scott, 2010). The aim was to test Level-2 perspective-taking in a sample of 6- to 11-year-olds (N = 80) and adults (N = 20). Participants were able to make Level-2 judgements on the direct measure. In contrast with the findings from Level-1 perspective-taking, there was no evidence of automatic processing of Level-2 perspectives on the indirect measure. This finding is consistent with the view that theory of mind abilities assessed by indirect measures are subject to signature limits. The Level-1/Level-2 distinction, suitably refined, marks one way in which efficient but inflexible theory of mind abilities are limited.

[1]  J. Flavell,et al.  The early development of inferences about the visual percepts of others. , 1974, Child development.

[2]  Tamsin C. German,et al.  Encoding of others’ beliefs without overt instruction , 2009, Cognition.

[3]  J. Braithwaite,et al.  Seeing it their way: evidence for rapid and involuntary computation of what other people see. , 2010, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[4]  Ian A Apperly,et al.  Egocentrism and automatic perspective taking in children and adults. , 2012, Child development.

[5]  J. Flavell,et al.  The development in very young children of tacit knowledge concerning visual perception. , 1977, Genetic psychology monographs.

[6]  Carey K. Morewedge,et al.  Perspective taking in children and adults: Equivalent egocentrism but differential correction , 2004 .

[7]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later , 2008, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[8]  F. J. Langdon,et al.  The Child's Conception of Space , 1967 .

[9]  D. Barr,et al.  Limits on theory of mind use in adults , 2003, Cognition.

[10]  Sunny Shin,et al.  Do 15-Month-Old Infants Understand False Beliefs ? , 2005 .

[11]  A. D. Smith.  Translucent experiences , 2008 .

[12]  R. Baillargeon,et al.  Do 12.5-month-old infants consider what objects others can see when interpreting their actions? , 2007, Cognition.

[13]  Nicola S. Clayton,et al.  The Mentality of Crows: Convergent Evolution of Intelligence in Corvids and Apes , 2004, Science.

[14]  B. Sodian,et al.  Now I see it but you don't: 14-month-olds can represent another person's visual perspective. , 2007, Developmental science.

[15]  Dana Samson,et al.  Executive function is necessary for perspective selection, not Level-1 visual perspective calculation: Evidence from a dual-task study of adults , 2010, Cognition.

[16]  Laurie R Santos,et al.  Rhesus monkeys, Macaca mulatta, know what others can and cannot hear , 2006, Animal Behaviour.

[17]  G. Csibra,et al.  Action Anticipation Through Attribution of False Belief by 2-Year-Olds , 2007, Psychological science.

[18]  L. Moses,et al.  Individual differences in inhibitory control and children's theory of mind. , 2001, Child development.

[19]  P. Light,et al.  "Own view" versus "good view" in a perspective-taking task. , 1983, Child development.

[20]  Josef Perner,et al.  Implicit Understanding of Belief , 1994 .

[21]  John H. Flavell,et al.  The development of three spatial perspective-taking rules. , 1981 .

[22]  Jonathan Baron,et al.  “I Know, you Know”: Epistemic Egocentrism in Children and Adults , 2003 .

[23]  J. Flavell.  Development of children’s knowledge about the mental world , 2000 .

[24]  R. Baillargeon,et al.  Infants' reasoning about others' false perceptions. , 2008, Developmental psychology.

[25]  Paul Bloom,et al.  Understanding children's and adults' limitations in mental state reasoning , 2004, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[26]  Ian A Apperly,et al.  Do humans have two systems to track beliefs and belief-like states? , 2009, Psychological review.

[27]  Z. Pylyshyn,et al.  Why are small and large numbers enumerated differently? A limited-capacity preattentive stage in vision. , 1994, Psychological review.

[28]  Raymond S. Nickerson,et al.  How We Know—and Sometimes Misjudge—What Others Know: Imputing One's Own Knowledge to Others , 1999 .

[29]  F. J. Langdon,et al.  The Child's Conception of Space , 1967 .

[30]  A. Endress,et al.  The Social Sense: Susceptibility to Others’ Beliefs in Human Infants and Adults , 2010, Science.

[31]  H. Wellman,et al.  Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: the truth about false belief. , 2001, Child development.

[32]  Z. Pylyshyn,et al.  Why are small and large numbers enumerated differently? A limited-capacity preattentive stage in vision. , 1994, Psychological review.

[33]  J. Flavell,et al.  Young children's knowledge about visual perception: Further evidence for the Level 1–Level 2 distinction. , 1981 .

[34]  E. Spelke,et al.  Language and Conceptual Development series Core systems of number , 2004 .

[35]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  We Saw It All Along , 2004, Psychological science.

[36]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Level 1 perspective-taking at 24 months of age , 2006 .

[37]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Eighteen-month-old infants show false belief understanding in an active helping paradigm , 2009, Cognition.