Lec 6: Mentalizing

What’s the prisoners’ hat puzzle? How does it illustrate mentalizing?

• THEY KNOW there’s 2 prisoners with black hats and 2 prisoners with white hats

• anyone who knows the color of their own hat can say it and be free but if they guess wrong then they get life in prison

• Answer: person 2 can figure it out. Person 1 sees a white hat & black hat in front of him so he doesn’t know his color, so he stays silent. Person two reasons: if 3 and I had matching hats, person 1 would’ve known his color so if he’s quiet it’s because me and person 3 have different hats. person 3’s hat is black so mine must be white.

• how it illustrates mentalizing: person 2 solves the problem by thinking about person 1’s mind. what person 1 sees —> what he would conclude —> what he would do as a result

Mentalizing

• Def: making sense of another’s mind / everyday mindreading by using what you can observe (words, behavior, context) to infer what’s going on in their minds, and using this inferences to predict what they will do

What are some areas in which mentalizing is used?

• attribution & person perception —> figuring out “why” someone did/said something

• non-literal communication —> sarcasm

• competition —> reading an opponent in poker

• cooperation —> you can only help someone reach they goals if you understand what their goals are

• empathy —>

Theory of Mind (ToM) v.s Mentalizing

ToM

• a capacity; something you have

• capacity to appreciate that others have minds & their minds have different content than yours

• present at all times, even when you sleep

Mentalizing

• a process; something you do

• the act of making sense of other people’s minds

• you need ToM (the tool) in order to mentalize (perform the action)

David Premack’s study of Sarah the chimpanzee

• what he did: showed Sarah a video of a man trying to reach an object/apple that was out of reach, even when he jumped. She was then shown 4 pics and pointed to the one showing how the man could get the object. she chose the right solution more often than not

• Premack argued this mean Sarah has ToM: capacity to appreciate the man has a mind and his mind currently holds a goal to reach the object

• where the term ToM began

Why did Dan Dennett criticize the Sarah study, and why are false beliefs the key test?

• Dennett argued Sarah could’ve just been projecting what she herself would do. Saying she could have chosen the box without ever thinking about the man as having a mind/goals/intentions.

• he didn’t say she DOESN’T have ToM, just that the study isn’t evidence that she has it

• So he proposed a better test using “Punch and Judy puppet show.” Punch puts Judy in a box and gets ready to throw her off a cliff but when his back is turned, Judy sneaks out. The children watching the show squeal because they know Punch thinks Judy’s still in the box which shows their understanding that Punch is acting of a false belief

• Why false beliefs are the key test: you can’t pass a false belief test by projection. If you imagine yourself in Punch’s position, you would know Judy escaped. So, you must separate his mind from yours, holding the incorrect belief. A true belief could just be your own belief projected onto someone else.

Which animals have which parts of ToM?

Based on the animals shown:

• sensitivity to the emotions of other members of your species —> all

• understanding others’ goals & intentions —> dogs, several primates, corvids

• representing what others see and know —> several primates, humans, corvids

• false beliefs —> humans

The Sally-Anne Task

Answering “where will Sally look for her ball?” correctly requires representing Sally’s belief even though it’s false and is not a belief that the child shares. Performance changes drastically between ages 3-5.

• age 3 —> about 73% fail

• age 3 ½ —> about 60% fail

• age 4 —> it flips and more than 50% pass

• age 5 —> 3 out of 4 pass

evidence that a child has ToM

What did researchers originally expect to find about how the brain does ToM?

• since the hat puzzle feels like difficult analytical reasoning, researchers assumed ToM would depend on brain regions like the dlPFC b/c its associated with logic

• they focused on dlPFC because its part of the working memory network —> holding information, manipulating it, comparing it

• but they were wrong —> unexpected divergences

what makes up the working memory network?

• dlPFC

• vlPFC

• superior parietal lobule, high up in the parietal cortex

What did Chris & Uta Frith find?

First Study:

• participants read stories, some required ToM to understand. For example, a burglar drops his glove while fleeing and a cop calls, “you there, stop!” only to return the glove, but the burglar thinks he’s been caught and turns himself in. Other stories required no mentalizing.

• comparing both story types, they found these 4 regions most active during ToM stories: TPJ, the temporal poles, dmPFC, posterior cingulate. There was no activity in the dlPFC at all.

Second Study:

• ToM cartoons vs no ToM cartoons

• In a ToM cartoon, a man stares at broken chair on ground, confused, while the viewer can see a piano falling toward the man. getting the joke requires knowing something he doesn’t. Non-ToM cartoons were funny w/o involving minds. Such as the factory creating replicas of the Leaning Tower & throwing away the ones that aren’t leaning.

• The same 4 regions showed up again for ToM cartoon

This is how we know the mentalizing system. This study demonstrated how there’s a separate system for reasoning about people and their mental states rather than the working memory system being involved.