Department of Experimental Psychology.
School of Psychology.
Psychol Bull. 2020 Nov;146(11):941-969. doi: 10.1037/bul0000302. Epub 2020 Aug 27.
The most dominant theory of human social cognition, the theory of mind hypothesis, emphasizes our ability to infer the mental states of others. After having represented the mental states of another person, however, we can also have an idea of how well our thinking aligns with theirs, and our sensitivity to this alignment may guide the flow of our social interactions. Here, we focus on the distinction between "mindreading" (inferring another's mental representation) and detecting the extent to which a represented mental state of another person is matching or mismatching with our own (mental conflict monitoring). We propose a reframing for mentalizing data of the past 40 years in terms of mental conflict monitoring rather than mental representation. Via a systematic review of 51 false belief neuroimaging studies, we argue that key brain regions implicated in false belief designs (namely, temporoparietal junction areas) may methodologically be tied to mental conflict rather than to mental representation. Patterns of false belief data suggests that autism may be tied to a subtle issue with monitoring mental conflict combined with intact mental representation, rather than to lacking mental representation abilities or "mindblindness" altogether. The consequences of this view for the larger social-cognitive domain are explored, including for perspective taking, moral judgments, and understanding irony and humor. This provides a potential shift in perspective for psychological science, its neuroscientific bases, and related disciplines: Throughout life, an adequate sensitivity to how others think differently (relational mentalizing) may be more fundamental to navigating the social world than inferring which thoughts others have (representational mentalizing). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
人类社会认知的最主要理论，即心理理论假设，强调了我们推断他人心理状态的能力。然而，在代表他人的心理状态之后，我们也可以了解我们的思维与他们的思维有多契合，而我们对这种契合的敏感性可能会引导我们的社交互动。在这里，我们关注的是“心理解读”（推断他人的心理表征）和检测另一个人所代表的心理状态与我们自己的心理状态匹配或不匹配的程度（心理冲突监测）之间的区别。我们提出了一种将过去 40 年的心理化数据重新表述为心理冲突监测而不是心理表征的方法。通过对 51 项错误信念神经影像学研究的系统综述，我们认为，在错误信念设计中涉及的关键大脑区域（即颞顶联合区）可能在方法论上与心理冲突有关，而不是与心理表征有关。错误信念数据的模式表明，自闭症可能与监测心理冲突的微妙问题有关，同时伴随着完整的心理表征能力，而不是完全缺乏心理表征能力或“心智盲”。这种观点对更大的社会认知领域的影响，包括观点采择、道德判断以及理解讽刺和幽默，都进行了探讨。这为心理学科学、其神经科学基础以及相关学科提供了一个潜在的视角转变：在整个生命过程中，对他人思维方式的差异（关系心理化）的敏感性可能比推断他人的思维方式（表象心理化）更有助于在社会世界中导航。
