Journal Club 4

Question 1

Which lecture does this JC relate to

Answer 1

Social Cognition

Question 2

What is theory of mind

Answer 2

imputing mental states to others – i.e. the ability to appreciate that others have different knowledge, beliefs and desires from our own and will act according to these (even if their beliefs are false)

Question 3

What is theory of mind relevant to

Answer 3

communication, social interactions, predicting others’ behavior, intentional deception, etc…

Question 4

How has theory of mind previously been tested in captives apes

Answer 4

Knower guesser paradigm
Competitive feeding paradigm

Question 5

Describe experiment 1

Answer 5

40 subjects
30 looked at target or distractor
20 looked first at target

Question 6

Describe experiment 2

Answer 6

30 subjects
22 looked at target or distractor
17 looked first at target

Question 7

What were the results of experiment 1

Answer 7

20 out of 30 is not statistically significantly different from chance (where chance is p = 0.5)

Question 8

What were the results of experiment 2

Answer 8

17 out of 22 is statistically significantly different from chance

Question 9

What were the results of the experiment in general

Answer 9

Exp 1 and 2 combined: significantly different from chance -> great apes have implicit falsebelief understanding

Question 10

What was the first low level explanation to the experiments

Answer 10

Experimental design tried to rule out the use of simple rules instead of reasoning about the agent’s mental state (e.g. “search in the first/last location where object was hidden” or “search in the last location the actor attended” or “search in the last location KK acted on”)

Question 11

Describe Heye’s opinion on this mattter

Answer 11

“For example, reappearance of the [agent’s] green shirt could have acted as a retrieval cue, activating a memory of the brick’s location when the green colour was last present.”