Actions, Interactions, and Social Relations

Question 1

how do humans use mentalistic action interpretation systems?

Answer 1

to attribute mental states to others

this developed in 1980s as a cognitive system to interpret and predict behaviour

Question 2

what is TOM?

Answer 2

theory of mind = consists of ability to reason about other peoples’ mental states, and is an important component of the mentalistic action interpretation system.

Question 3

what has been used to test children’s development of TOM?

Answer 3

false-belief tasks, e.g., perner et al (1987) smarties task, and sally-anne task

Question 4

developmental change of TOM

Answer 4

children’s ability to understand others’ minds shows major developmental change from 3-4y

has been replicated in a large range of studies (Wellman and Watson, 2001)

Question 5

disputes about TOM research

Answer 5

ability to pass false-belief tasks should not be taken as TOM evidence

in tasks that require less focus on executive processing, even younger children can understand false-beliefs

Question 6

what are non-mentalistic action interpretation systems?

Answer 6

infants have access to these, which are centred around 3 key elements:

1. concept of agent
2. concept of goal
3. principle of cost-efficiency

Question 7

what is infants’ concept of agents?

Answer 7

this is distinct from inanimate objects

encompasses people, hands, and animals. unlike objects, they move on their own and pursue efficient means to their goals

Question 8

woodward (1998)

Answer 8

shows 9m infants interpret and encode agents’ behaviour as directed towards a specific goal,

they looked longer when reach followed the trajectory, but only for agents

Question 9

csibra (1999)

Answer 9

showed 6-12m infants expect agents to minimise the cost of their actions,

they expected agents not to jump in absence of an obstacle and looked longer during these trials

Question 10

liu and spelke (2016)

Answer 10

also showed 6m infants expect agents to pursue cost-effective goals,

they expected them to perform a minimally costly action when presented with a new obstacle

Question 11

what does non-mentalistic evidence show?

Answer 11

infants are able to infer the goals pursued by agents, and understand actions are costly and expect agents to minimise their costs

infants do not need to infer mental states. they only need to understand agent, goal, and cost.

Question 12

what can be used to understand social relationships?

Answer 12

language and observation, as certain behaviours serve as cues to different social relationships

Question 13

thomas et al (2022)

Answer 13

found infants and toddlers infer close relationships between people who shared food and saliva,

expected these people to respond to one another in distress

Question 14

what else did thomas et al (2022) conclude?

Answer 14

12m infants can learn about their potential social partners by making inferences about their parents’ relationships and leveraging representations of relationships