1 Department of Developmental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Göttingen.
2 Department of Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology, Institute of Psychology, University of Göttingen.
Psychol Sci. 2018 Jun;29(6):888-900. doi: 10.1177/0956797617747090. Epub 2018 Apr 16.
Recently, theory-of-mind research has been revolutionized by findings from novel implicit tasks suggesting that at least some aspects of false-belief reasoning develop earlier in ontogeny than previously assumed and operate automatically throughout adulthood. Although these findings are the empirical basis for far-reaching theories, systematic replications are still missing. This article reports a preregistered large-scale attempt to replicate four influential anticipatory-looking implicit theory-of-mind tasks using original stimuli and procedures. Results showed that only one of the four paradigms was reliably replicated. A second set of studies revealed, further, that this one paradigm was no longer replicated once confounds were removed, which calls its validity into question. There were also no correlations between paradigms, and thus, no evidence for their convergent validity. In conclusion, findings from anticipatory-looking false-belief paradigms seem less reliable and valid than previously assumed, thus limiting the conclusions that can be drawn from them.
最近，通过新颖的内隐任务的发现，心理理论的研究发生了革命性的变化，这些发现表明，至少某些错误信念推理的方面在个体发生中比之前假设的更早发展，并在整个成年期自动运作。尽管这些发现是深远理论的经验基础，但系统的复制仍然缺失。本文报告了一项预先注册的大规模尝试，使用原始刺激和程序复制四个有影响力的预期内隐心理理论任务。结果表明，只有四个范式中的一个得到了可靠的复制。第二项研究进一步表明，一旦去除了混杂因素，这个范式就不再被复制，这使得其有效性受到质疑。这些范式之间也没有相关性，因此没有它们的会聚有效性的证据。总之，预期内隐错误信念范式的发现似乎不如之前假设的那样可靠和有效，从而限制了从中得出的结论。
