Newton Ashley M, de Villiers Jill G
Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2007 Jul;18(7):574-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01942.x.
This experiment tested the ability of 81 adult subjects to make a decision on a simple nonverbal false-belief reasoning task while concurrently either shadowing prerecorded spoken dialogue or tapping along with a rhythmic shadowing track. Our results showed that the verbal task, but not tapping, significantly disrupted false-belief reasoning, suggesting that language plays a key role in working theory of mind in adults, even when the false-belief reasoning is nonverbal.
本实验测试了81名成年受试者在一项简单的非语言错误信念推理任务中做出决策的能力，同时他们要么跟读预先录制的口语对话，要么跟着有节奏的跟读曲目轻敲。我们的结果表明，言语任务而非轻敲任务显著干扰了错误信念推理，这表明语言在成年人的心理理论运作中起着关键作用，即使错误信念推理是非语言的。
