Fizke Ella, Barthel Dana, Peters Thomas, Rakoczy Hannes
Institute of Psychology & Courant Research Centre "Evolution of Social Behaviour", University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany.
Institute of Psychology & Courant Research Centre "Evolution of Social Behaviour", University of Göttingen, Waldweg 26, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany.
Cognition. 2014 Mar;130(3):315-34. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.017. Epub 2013 Dec 27.
While developmental experiments with children and elderly subjects, work with neuropsychological patients and adult experimental studies have consistently found close relations between executive function and theory of mind, the foundation of this relation still remains somewhat unclear. One prominent account holds that executive function is specifically involved in ascribing such mental states, paradigmatically beliefs, that aim at representing the world truly because ascribing such states requires inhibition of normative defaults (beliefs being true) (e.g. Sabbagh, Moses, & Shiverick, 2006). The present studies systematically tested for the role of executive function in different forms of mental state ascription as a function of the type of state ascribed (beliefs or desires) and the first person involvement of the ascriber (whether she herself has an attitude conflicting with one to be ascribed to someone else) in young children. The results reveal that (i) executive function is related not only to belief ascription but equally to desire ascription when both are matched in terms of logical complexity (such that two subjective attitudes have to be ascribed to two agents that are incompatible with each other). (ii) Both for desires and for beliefs, these relations are strongest in such tasks where the ascriber herself is one of the two agents, i.e. has a belief or desire herself that stands in contrast to that to be ascribed to someone else. All in all, these findings suggest that executive function figures in coordinating perspectives more generally, not only epistemic ones, and in particular in coordinating others' and one's own conflicting perspectives.
虽然针对儿童和老年受试者的发展实验、对神经心理学患者的研究以及成人实验研究一直发现执行功能与心理理论之间存在密切关系，但这种关系的基础仍有些不明朗。一种主流观点认为，执行功能特别涉及到归因这类旨在真实表征世界的心理状态，典型的是信念，因为归因这类状态需要抑制规范性默认情况（信念为真）（例如，萨巴格、摩西和希夫里克，2006年）。本研究系统地测试了执行功能在不同形式的心理状态归因中的作用，该作用是幼儿所归因状态类型（信念或愿望）以及归因者第一人称参与情况（她自己是否有一种与要归因于他人的态度相冲突的态度）的函数。结果表明：（i）当信念归因和愿望归因在逻辑复杂性上相匹配（即必须将两种主观态度归因于两个相互不兼容的主体）时，执行功能不仅与信念归因有关，同样也与愿望归因有关。（ii）对于愿望和信念而言，在归因者自己是两个主体之一的任务中，即她自己有一种与要归因于他人的信念或愿望形成对比的信念或愿望时，这些关系最为强烈。总而言之，这些发现表明执行功能更普遍地在协调观点中发挥作用，不仅是认知观点，特别是在协调他人与自己相互冲突的观点方面。
