\title {Social Cognition \\ Lecture 07}
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\def \ititle {Lecture 07}
\def \isubtitle {Social Cognition}
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\textbf{\ititle}: \isubtitle
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\section{Automatic and Non-automatic Mindreading}
\section{Automatic and Non-automatic Mindreading}
Are human adults’ abilities to track others’ beliefs automatic?
For our purposes, a process is \emph{automatic} to the degree that whether it occurs is independent of
its relevance to the particulars of the subject's task, motives and aims.
‘Automatic mindreading’ is short for ‘mindreading that is a consequence of
automatic processes only.’
\citet{Southgate:2007js} created an anticipatory looking false belief task, originally
for use with two-year-olds, which has been adapated to provide evidence for automatic
false belief tracking.
There is evidence that some mindreading in human adults is
entirely a consequence of relatively automatic processes
\citep{kovacs_social_2010,Schneider:2011fk,Wel:2013uq} and
that not all mindreading in human adults is
\citep{apperly:2008_back,apperly_why_2010,Wel:2013uq}.
Southgate et al, 2007; Senju et al, 2009 video S1
Explain the southgate et al paradigm.
[This is not about automaticity. Just an explanation of the paradigm
that will be used to test belief tracking and whether it is automatic.]
Southgate et al, 2007; Senju et al, 2009 video S1
Southgate et al, 2007; Senju et al, 2009 video S1
Southgate et al, 2007; Senju et al, 2009 video S1
Southgate et al, 2007; Senju et al, 2009 video S1
Southgate et al, 2007; Senju et al, 2009 video S1
Southgate et al, 2007; Senju et al, 2009 video S1
Southgate et al, 2007; Senju et al, 2009 video S1
Southgate et al, 2007; Senju et al, 2009 video S1
Southgate et al, 2007; Senju et al, 2009 video S1
So are these responses automatic or not?
Cannot tell just from the fact that they are eye movements
(these can be dominated by automatic processes, but are not always).
Schneider et al (2014, figure 1)
One way to show that mindreading is automatic is to give subjects a task which does not require tracking beliefs and then to compare their performance in two scenarios:
a scenario where someone else has a false belief, and a scenario in which someone else has a true belief.
If mindreading occurs automatically, performance should not vary between the two scenarios because others’ beliefs are always irrelevant to the subjects’ task and motivations.
Schneider et al (2014, figure 3)
\citet{Schneider:2011fk} did just this.
They showed their participants a series of videos and instructed them to detect when a figure waved or, in a second experiment, to discriminate between high and low tones as quickly as possible.
Performing these tasks did not require tracking anyone’s beliefs, and the participants did not report mindreading when asked afterwards.
on experiment 1: ‘Participants never reported belief tracking when questioned in an open format after the experiment (“What do you think this experiment was about?”). Furthermore, this verbal debriefing about the experiment’s purpose never triggered participants to indicate that they followed the actor’s belief state’ \citep[p.~2]{Schneider:2011fk}
Nevertheless, participants’ eye movements indicated that they were tracking the beliefs of a person who happened to be in the videos.
In a further study, \citet{schneider:2014_task} raised the stakes by giving participants a task that would be harder to perform if they were tracking another’s beliefs.
So now tracking another’s beliefs is not only irrelevant to performing the tasks: it may actually hinder performance.
Despite this, they found evidence in adults’ looking times that they were tracking another’s false beliefs.
This indicates that ‘subjects … track the mental states of others even when they have instructions to complete a task that is incongruent with this operation’ \citep[p.~46]{schneider:2014_task} and so provides evidence for automaticity.%
\footnote{%
% quote is necessary to qualify in the light of their interpretation; difference between looking at end (task-dependent) and at an earlier phase (task-independent)?
%\citet[p.~46]{schneider:2014_task}: ‘we have demonstrated here that subjects implicitly track the mental states of others even when they have instructions to complete a task that is incongruent with this operation. These results provide support for the hypothesis that there exists a ToM mechanism that can operate implicitly to extract belief like states of others (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009) that is immune to top-down task settings.’
It is hard to completely rule out the possibility that belief tracking is merely spontaneous rather than automatic.
I take the fact that belief tracking occurs despite plausibly making subjects’ tasks harder to perform to indicate automaticity over spontaneity.
If non-automatic belief tracking typically involves awareness of belief tracking, then the fact that subjects did not mention belief tracking when asked after the experiment about its purpose and what they were doing in it further supports the claim that belief tracking was automatic.
}
Further evidence that mindreading can occur in adults even when counterproductive has been provided by \citet{kovacs_social_2010}, who showed that another’s irrelevant beliefs about the location of an object can affect how quickly people can detect the object’s presence,
and by \citet{Wel:2013uq}, who showed that the same can influence the paths people take to reach an object.
Taken together, this is compelling evidence that mindreading in adult humans sometimes involves automatic processes only.
‘Participants never reported belief tracking when questioned in an open format after the experiment (“What do you think this experiment was about?”). Furthermore, this verbal debriefing about the experiment’s purpose never triggered participants to indicate that they followed the actor’s belief state’ \citep[p.~2]{Schneider:2011fk}
Back & Apperly (2010, fig 1, part)
This is the data for answers that required a ‘yes’ response.
So does all mindreading in adult humans involve only processes which are automatic?
No: it turns out that verbal responses in false belief tasks that are A-tasks are not typically a consequence of automatic belief tracking.
To show this, \citet{back:2010_apperly} instructed people to watch videos in which someone acquires a belief, either true or false, and then, after the video, asked them an unexpected question about the protagonist’s belief \citep[see also][]{apperly:2006_belief}.
They measured how long people took to answer this question.
Starting with the hypothesis that answering a question about belief involves automatic mindreading only,
they reasoned that the mindreading necessary to answer a question about belief will have occurred before the question is even asked.
Accordingly there should be no delay in answering an unexpected question about belief—or, at least, no more delay than in answering unexpected questions about any other facts that are automatically tracked.
But they found that people were slower to answer unexpected questions about belief than predicted.
Importantly this was not due to any difficulty with questions about belief as such: when such questions were expected, they were answered just as quickly as other, non-belief questions.
It seems that, when asked an unexpected question about another’s belief, people typically need time to work out what the other believes.
We must therefore reject the hypothesis that answering a question about belief involves automatic mindreading only.%
\footnote{%
\citet[ms~p.~9]{carruthers:2015_mindreading} objects (following \citealp{cohen:2009_encoding}) that these experiments are ‘not really about encoding belief but recalling it.’
Note that this objection is already answered by \citet[p.~56]{back:2010_apperly}.
}
This is what you as subject see.
Actually you can't see this so well, let me make it bigger.
This is how the experiment progresses.
You can see that the protagonist leaves in the third
phase. This is the version of the sequence in which the protagonist has a true belief.
van der Wel et al (2014, figure 1)
Just look at the 'True Belief' lines (the effect can also be found when your belief
turns out to be false, but I'm not worried about that here.)
Do you see the area under the curve?
When you are moving the mouse,
the protagonist's false belief is pulling you away from the actual location
and towards the location she believes this object to be in!
van der Wel et al (2014, figure 2)
Here's a zoomed in view. We're only interested in the top left box (implicit condition,
participant has true belief).
To repeat,
When you are moving the mouse,
the protagonist's false belief is pulling you away from the actual location
and towards the location she believes this object to be in!
van der Wel et al (2014, figure 2)
Using the same task, van der Wel et al also show that some processes are NOT automatic ...
\citep[p.\ 132]{Wel:2013uq}:
‘In support of a more rule-based and controlled system, we found that response initiation times
changed as a function of the congruency of the participant’s and the agent’s belief in the
explicit group only. Thus, when participants had to track both beliefs, they slowed down
their responses when there was a belief conflict versus when there was not. The observation
that this result only occurred for the explicit group provides evidence for a controlled system.’
van der Wel et al (2014, figure 3)
Three Questions about Belief-Tracking
\section{Three Questions about Belief-Tracking}
\section{Three Questions about Belief-Tracking}
Three questions:
\begin{enumerate}
\item Why is belief-tracking in adults sometimes but not always automatic?
\item How could belief-tracking ever be automatic given evidence that it depends on working memory and consumes attention?
\item Why are there dissociations in nonhuman apes’ performance on belief-tracking tasks?
\end{enumerate}
Incidentally, the dissociation in performance may well arise for nonhumans as well
as for humans.
Commenting on their success in showing that great apes can track false beliefs,
Krupenye et al comment that ...
‘the present evidence may constitute an implicit understanding of belief’
\citep[p.~113]{krupenye:2016_great}
Krupenye et al, 2016 p. 113
Krachun and colleagues
found some evidence for false belief tracking in chimps back in 2009
(which they downplayed), and also, using another measure, competitive object choice task,
they found insensitivity to others’ false beliefs.
Krachun et al, 2009 figure 2 (part)
Chimpanzee anticipatory looking indicates tracking others’ false beliefs.
“Looking. Our second measure was whether participants looked at least once at the container the
competitor was not reaching for during the couple of seconds it took E to slide the platform towards
them.” “Note that proportions are based only on trials in which participants chose the same
container as the competitor [ie: incorrect trials], and for apes in version A the measure was face
rather than eye orientation. Bars show standard error. * p < .05.”
Recall the construction of minimal theory of mind from last time
Also Edwards and Low, 2018 ...
Edwards and Low, 2017 figure 7a
Edwards and Low, 2017 figure 7a
Edwards and Low, 2017 figure 7a
A Dual-Process Theory of Mindreading
\section{A Dual-Process Theory of Mindreading}
\section{A Dual-Process Theory of Mindreading}
Dual Process Theory of Mindreading (core part)
Two (or more) mindreading processes are distinct:
the conditions which influence whether they occur,
and which outputs they generate,
do not completely overlap.
This is a description of a model of mind at the level of a
computational theory; it is completely agnostic about
representations and algorithms.
Start with a simple causal model.
‘response 1’ is a variable representing which response the subject will give.
[Which values it takes will depend on what sort of response it is (e.g. a verbal
response, proactive gaze, button press.)
We can think of it as taking three values, one for correct belief tracking,
one for fact tracking, and one for any other response.]
‘process 1’ and ‘process 2’ are variables which each represent whether a certain
kind of mindreading process will occur and, if so, what it’s outcome is.
And the arrows show that the probability that response 1 will have a certain value is
influenced by the value of the variables process 1 and process 2 (and by other things
not included in the model).
So it should be possible to intervene on the value of ‘process 1’ in order to
bring about a change in the value of ‘response 1’.
[I’ve used thicker and thinner arrows informally to indicate stronger
and weaker dependence. Strictly speaking the width has no meaning and this model
doesn’t specify exactly how the values of variables are related, only that they are.]
Of course, much the same is true for ‘response 2’ as well. It’s just that
the changing the values of other variables will have different effects on
the values of ‘response 1’ and ‘response 2’.
[Limit: this depiction ignores time, which is of course critical.]
We must avoid a false assumption about the relation
between types of response and kinds of process ...
So what does a Dual Process Theory of Mindreading claim?
The core claim is just this:
Dual Process Theory of Mindreading (core part)
Two (or more) mindreading processes are distinct:
the conditions which influence whether they occur,
and which outputs they generate,
do not completely overlap.
Take a pair of response types, R1 and R2, which can both indicate belief tracking
(or, thinking more generally, perspective taking) under some conditions.
For example, consider initial proactive gaze (R1) contrasted with final button selection (R2).
The conditions under which one or another response type tracks beliefs varies ...
1.a E.g. changing the \textbf{instructions} reduces the probability that responses
of one type will track beliefs without much affecting the probability that responses
of the other type will track belief.
Direct evidence for this includes studies by Schneider et al.
(Would be good to have more given some difficulties in replicating these;
although note that Schneider et al previously replicated these results several times).
Indirect evidence for this involving responses such as RTs and motion trajectories comes
from Edwards and Low, 2017; Kovacs et al; van der Wel et el.
1.b Or, e.g., changing the \textbf{content of the belief} to be tracked from location to
identity, say, reduces the probability that responses of one type track beliefs
without much affecting the probability that responses of the other type will track beliefs.
Evidence for this includes studies by Low and his collaborators.
So it should be possible find different conditions that reduce the
probability that different responses track beliefs.
Further, the probability that responses of these two types track beliefs should be
differently affected by factors such as time pressure and cognitive load. (It isn’t
important that either is entirely unaffected; what matters is just that the effects are
different.)
As far as I know we don’t yet have direct evidence for this, because few studies
have compared what happens to two response types as factors like time pressure
or cognitive load are varies.
There is, of course, some indirect evidence for this from studies which show
that responses of some types are less susceptible
to cognitive load than others (e.g. \citet{qureshi:2010_executive} on L1 VPT).
So if we think just about adult humans’ mindreading (or chimpanzee mindreading, for that matter),
it turns out that when we consider different ways of measuring mindreading, we find
a pattern of dissociations between performance.
Maymon et al, pilot Figure 1, used with permission
Participants started while seated at a desk; they needed to get up to help
a protagonist by taking their chair, standing on it and retrieving a bag
from a high place.
Maymon et al (pilot), figure 2, used with permission
First fixations show just the pattern you would expect for beliefs about locations.
Maymon et al (pilot), figure 2, used with permission
First fixations also show just the pattern our dual process theory predicts for
beliefs about identity.
Maymon et al (pilot), figure 2, used with permission
Maymon et al divided participants’ movements into four stages:
swerving (stage-1), advancing (stage-2) towards the actual or non-actual bag,
reaching (stage-3) for the bag, and ultimately handing over (stage-4) the actual or
non-actual bag.
The first stage of movement shows just the pattern that first fixation did,
and indeed in FB-LOC, first fixation and swerve are correlated.
Maymon et al (pilot), figure 4B, used with permission
Here you can see how participants moved in the false belief location condition.
There was also a true belief condition.
As you can see, participants mostly started off in the right direction.
This is the swerve.
But there is quite a bit of switching, and a number of
The swerve is correlated with the protagonists’ belief state:
which direction they swerve in differs between true and false beliefs.
The direction of swerve is also correlated with proactive gaze
Maymon et al (pilot), figure 4E-F, used with permission
So what does a Dual Process Theory of Mindreading claim?
The core claim is just this:
Dual Process Theory of Mindreading (core part)
Two (or more) mindreading processes are distinct:
the conditions which influence whether they occur,
and which outputs they generate,
do not completely overlap.
conclusion
In conclusion, ...