Faculty of Science, Institute of Biology, Department of Comparative Cognition, University of Neuchâtel, Rue-Emile-Argand 11, Neuchâtel, 2000, Switzerland.
Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Institute of Language and Communication Sciences, Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, Pierre-à-Mazel 7, Neuchâtel, 2000, Switzerland.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2023 Dec;98(6):2028-2048. doi: 10.1111/brv.12994. Epub 2023 Jul 5.
Understanding the origins of human social cognition is a central challenge in contemporary science. In recent decades, the idea of a 'Theory of Mind' (ToM) has emerged as the most popular way of explaining unique features of human social cognition. This default view has been progressively undermined by research on 'implicit' ToM, which suggests that relevant precursor abilities may already be present in preverbal human infants and great apes. However, this area of research suffers from conceptual difficulties and empirical limitations, including explanatory circularity, over-intellectualisation, and inconsistent empirical replication. Our article breaks new ground by adapting 'script theory' for application to both linguistic and non-linguistic agents. It thereby provides a new theoretical framework able to resolve the aforementioned issues, generate novel predictions, and provide a plausible account of how individuals make sense of the behaviour of others. Script theory is based on the premise that pre-verbal infants and great apes are capable of basic forms of agency-detection and non-mentalistic goal understanding, allowing individuals to form event-schemata that are then used to make sense of the behaviour of others. We show how script theory circumvents fundamental problems created by ToM-based frameworks, explains patterns of inconsistent replication, and offers important novel predictions regarding how humans and other animals understand and predict the behaviour of others.
理解人类社会认知的起源是当代科学的一个核心挑战。在最近几十年，“心理理论”（Theory of Mind，ToM）的概念已经成为解释人类社会认知独特特征的最流行方式。然而，关于“内隐心理理论”的研究逐渐破坏了这种默认观点，该研究表明，相关的前体能力可能已经存在于未言语的人类婴儿和大型猿类中。然而，该研究领域存在概念上的困难和经验上的限制，包括解释上的循环、过度理智化以及经验复制的不一致性。我们的文章通过将“脚本理论”改编为适用于语言和非语言主体的应用，开辟了新的研究领域。它提供了一个新的理论框架，能够解决上述问题，产生新的预测，并提供一个关于个体如何理解他人行为的合理解释。脚本理论基于这样一个前提，即未言语的婴儿和大型猿类能够进行基本形式的主体检测和非心理主义的目标理解，从而使个体能够形成事件图式，然后利用这些图式来理解他人的行为。我们展示了脚本理论如何规避基于心理理论框架产生的基本问题，解释了不一致复制模式，并提供了关于人类和其他动物如何理解和预测他人行为的重要新预测。
