University of Göttingen, Institute of Psychology, Göttingen, Germany.
Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition, Göttingen, Germany.
PLoS One. 2019 Mar 25;14(3):e0213772. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213772. eCollection 2019.
In the last 15 years, Theory of Mind research has been revolutionized by the development of new implicit tasks. Such tasks aim at tapping children's and adults' uninstructed, largely automatic mental state ascription, indicated in spontaneous looking behavior when observing agents who act on the basis of false beliefs. Studies with anticipatory looking, in particular, have suggested that basic ToM capacities operate from very early in life and remain in unconscious operation throughout the lifespan. Recently, however, systematic replication attempts of anticipatory looking measures have yielded a complex and puzzling mixture of successful, partial and non-replications. The present study aimed at shedding light on the question whether there is a system to this pattern. More specifically, in a set of three preregistered experiments, it was tested whether those conditions that could previously be replicated and those that could not differ in crucial conceptual respects such that the former do not strictly require ToM whereas the latter do. This was tested by the implementation of novel control conditions. The results were complex. There was generally no unambiguous evidence for reliable spontaneous ToM and no effect of the number of passed familiarization trials. Neither was there any unambiguous evidence that the previous mixed patterns of (non-)replications could be explained (away) by the sub-mentalizing account tested in the new control conditions. The empirical situation remains puzzling, and the question whether there is some such thing as implicit and spontaneous ToM remains to be clarified.
在过去的 15 年中，通过开发新的内隐任务，心理理论研究发生了革命性的变化。这些任务旨在挖掘儿童和成人未经指导的、主要是自动的心理状态归因，这在观察基于错误信念行事的代理人时的自发观察行为中有所体现。特别是前瞻性观察研究表明，基本的心理理论能力在生命早期就开始运作，并在整个生命周期中无意识地运作。然而，最近对前瞻性观察测量的系统复制尝试产生了复杂而令人困惑的成功、部分和非复制的混合结果。本研究旨在探讨这种模式是否存在系统。更具体地说，在一系列三项预先注册的实验中，研究人员测试了以前可以复制的条件和那些不能复制的条件是否在关键的概念方面存在差异，以至于前者不需要心理理论，而后者需要。这是通过实施新的对照条件来测试的。结果很复杂。一般来说，没有明确的证据表明存在可靠的自发心理理论，也没有通过熟悉度试验的次数的影响。也没有明确的证据表明，以前的（非）复制混合模式可以用新的对照条件中测试的次心理理论解释（消除）。实证情况仍然令人费解，是否存在内隐和自发心理理论这样的东西仍有待澄清。
