Lecture 6 - animal ToM

Question 1

machiavellian intelligence and tactical deception (bryne & Whiten, 1988)

Answer 1

systematic compilation of observational evidence of spontaneous instances of apparent deceptive behvaiours suggests primates are mind readers because they can manipulate and react to what others can or can not perceive and myabe what they can represent
this would be part of primates’ machiavellian intelligence - the ability to outsmart others in social interaction

Question 2

key example of machiavellian intelligence highlighted in bryne and whiten 1988

Answer 2

female grooming the subadult males (action not tolerated by males) but does it hidden behind a rock so the adult male cannot see

Question 3

critique of the grooming example in brynne and whiten 1988

Answer 3

FB interpretation: female attributes to male an erroneous representation of reality (a false belief)
visual perspective interpretation: female attributes to male perception (or knowledge) of only part of reality
evidence open to interpretations: behaviorus acquired by blind trial and error?
evidence weak because anecdotal: “the plural of anecdote is not data” Bernstein, 1988

Question 4

do chimpanzees understand the mental state of seeing? Povinelli and eddy 1996

Answer 4

begging for food from two humans in various states of seeing (ie back turned, bucket on head etc)
concluded they were not able to understand this (could only get turned to face and not turned to face correct)-> and this is the simplest mentalistic state
they learn by trial and error
so no ToM

Question 5

ToM in nonhuman primates (Heyes, 1998)

Answer 5

no
can be explained by non-mentalistic processes
“ it could have occured by chance or as a product of non-mentalistic processes such as associative learning or inferences based on non-mental categories

Question 6

chimps as behavioru readers instead of mind readers

Answer 6

imported by perner at a later date into developmental psych
chimps apparently mentalisitic feats are just behaviour reading. just learning to associate certain physical configurations with a certain outcome or the egent will approach that object or location where the pbject previously was
Povinelli and Vonk 2003 as a reference

Question 7

1990s what was the consesnsus on nonhuman primate ToM

Answer 7

ToM capacity appeared to be an exclusive human capacity
chimpanzees seemed to lack the very foundation for knowledge and belief attribution - understanding “seeing”
their gaze following, tactical deception, pointing and similar behaviours did not appear to be based on mentalistic ToM understanding but just on behaviour reading

Question 8

what changed the consensus

Answer 8

testing chimp theories of chimp ToM
in their natural lives most of the time chimps are competitive about food. Povinelli’s tasks are about cooperative food sharing human-style so it is just not a valid means for comparison - so make it ecologically valid

Question 9

flobaum and santos finding

Answer 9

competitive paradigm extended to rhesus monkeys
they prefer to steal food from humans who are not looking at them
so maybe now we are using competitive paradigms, nonhuman primates might have a theory of mind afterall

Question 10

behaviour reading vs mindreading debate

what did povinelli and colls have to say

Answer 10

rejected the new findings
just behaiour reading - animals learn complex behvaiorual rules to predict others pbehaviour - what conditions are associated with what behaviour
explanation imported by perner into developmental psych to explain away infant FB

Question 11

does the chimp have a ToM? 30 yeas later

Call and Tomasello (2008)

Answer 11

on the 30th anniversary of premack and woodruff = recent evidence reviewed that suggests in many respects they do, whereas in other respects they may not

• chimps understand the goals and intentions of others as well and the perception and knowledge of others
• despite several seemingly valid attempts there is currently no evidence that chimps understand false beliefs
• our conclusions for the moment is that chimps understand others in terms of a perception-goal psychology, as opposed to a full-fledged human-like belief-desire psychology

Question 12

heyes 2017

define mentalising

Answer 12

ascribing mental states to other in order to predict behaviour (interchangeable with ToM)

Question 13

heyes 2017

define submentalising

Answer 13

using non-mentalistic cues to predict the behaviour of others. these cues are usually particularly salient contextual information, which can prime participants attention, memory or learnt associations