scholarly journals The robustness and generalizability of findings on spontaneous false belief sensitivity: a replication attempt

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 172273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Schuwerk ◽  
Beate Priewasser ◽  
Beate Sodian ◽  
Josef Perner
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Test Phase ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Replication Study ◽  
Familiarization Phase ◽  
Sole Purpose ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Explicit Theory ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Anticipatory Looking

Influential studies showed that 25-month-olds and neurotypical adults take an agent's false belief into account in their anticipatory looking patterns (Southgate et al. 2007 Psychol. Sci. 18 , 587–592 ( doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x ); Senju et al. 2009 Science 325 , 883–885 ( doi:10.1126/science.1176170 )). These findings constitute central pillars of current accounts distinguishing between implicit and explicit Theory of Mind. In our first experiment, which initially included a replication as well as two manipulations, we failed to replicate the original finding in 2- to 3-year-olds ( N  = 48). Therefore, we ran a second experiment with the sole purpose of seeing whether the effect can be found in an independent, tightly controlled, sufficiently powered and preregistered replication study. This replication attempt failed again in a sample of 25-month-olds ( N  = 78), but was successful in a sample of adults ( N  = 115). In all samples, a surprisingly high number of participants did not correctly anticipate the agent's action during the familiarization phase. This led to massive exclusion rates when adhering to the criteria of the original studies and strongly limits the interpretability of findings from the test phase. We discuss both the reliability of our replication attempts as well as the replicability of non-verbal anticipatory looking paradigms of implicit false belief sensitivity, in general.

scholarly journals Testing the stability of theory of mind: A longitudinal approach

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. e0241721
Author(s):  
Diane Poulin-Dubois ◽  
Naomi Azar ◽  
Brandon Elkaim ◽  
Kimberly Burnside
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Social Communication ◽  
False Belief ◽  
The Social ◽  
Longitudinal Approach ◽  
Explicit Theory ◽  
Second Year ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Violation Of Expectation

An explicit understanding of false belief develops around the age of four years. However, tasks based on spontaneous responses have revealed an implicit understanding of belief and other theory of mind constructs in infants in their second year of life. The few longitudinal studies that have examined conceptual continuity of theory of mind from infancy to early childhood have reported mixed findings. Here we report two longitudinal experiments to investigate the developmental relation between implicit and explicit theory of mind. No link was observed in the first experiment between false belief and intention understanding measured at 14 and 18 months with the violation of expectation paradigm and tasks measuring explicit and implicit false belief at four or five years of age. In the second experiment, infants aged 18 months were tested with a battery of tasks that measured knowledge inference and false belief. They were then tested with the theory of mind scale at five years of age. The parents completed the Children’s Social Understanding Scale (CSUS) and the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ). As in the first experiment, there were no associations between early and later forms of theory of mind. We suggest that these findings do not support the view that there is conceptual continuity in theory of mind development.

Is Implicit Theory of Mind a Real and Robust Phenomenon? Results From a Systematic Replication Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 888-900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louisa Kulke ◽  
Britta von Duhn ◽  
Dana Schneider ◽  
Hannes Rakoczy
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Convergent Validity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Replication Study ◽  
Implicit Theory ◽  
Empirical Basis ◽  
False Belief Reasoning ◽  
Belief Reasoning ◽  
Anticipatory Looking

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.

Progressing from an implicit to an explicit false belief understanding: A matter of executive control?

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Kloo ◽  
Susanne Kristen-Antonow ◽  
Beate Sodian
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Executive Functions ◽  
Executive Control ◽  
Second Order ◽  
False Belief ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Explicit Theory ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Reflective Processing ◽  
Conscious Control

In a longitudinal study ( N = 54), we investigated the developmental relation between children’s implicit and explicit theory of mind and executive functions. We found that implicit false belief understanding at 18 months was correlated with explicit false belief understanding at 4 to 5 years of age, with the latter being closely related to second-order false belief understanding at 5 years of age. Also, replicating a number of studies, explicit first- and second-order false belief understanding, in contrast to implicit false belief understanding, were related to executive functioning. This indicates that executive functions play a role in standard explicit false belief tasks, but not in implicit false belief understanding. We argue that spontaneous, implicit false belief understanding does not require conscious control, whereas explicit false belief understanding is based on conscious, reflective processing. In sum, we suggest a developmental enrichment account of theory of mind development, with belief processing becoming increasingly reflective and controlled with advancing age.

scholarly journals Are we less social in noisy environments? No effect of noise on implicit Theory of Mind performance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louisa Kulke ◽  
hannes rakoczy
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Environmental Noise ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Implicit Theory ◽  
Noisy Environments ◽  
Testing Environment ◽  
Gaze Patterns ◽  
Replication Research ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Anticipatory Looking

Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to attribute beliefs and desires to others, has been a recent focus of replication research. While some researchers found an implicit form of ToM, which could be measured with different tasks, including anticipatory looking measures, other researchers could not replicate these finding. The testing conditions may play a role for the success of replications. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate the effect of a noisy testing environment on results in an anticipatory looking false belief task. The original findings could only be partially replicated, leaving room for alternative explanations. Environmental noise did not significantly affect gaze patterns. Therefore, previous failed replications are unlikely to be related to different levels in environmental noise.

scholarly journals A two-lab direct replication attempt of Southgate, Senju and Csibra (2007)

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 210190
Author(s):  
D. Kampis ◽  
P. Kármán ◽  
G. Csibra ◽  
V. Southgate ◽  
M. Hernik
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Collaborative Study ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Action Prediction ◽  
Belief Attribution ◽  
Link Type ◽  
False Belief Understanding

The study by Southgate et al. (2007 Psychol. Sci. 18 , 587–592. ( doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01944.x )) has been widely cited as evidence for false-belief attribution in young children. Recent replication attempts of this paradigm have yielded mixed results: several studies did not replicate the original findings, raising doubts about the suitability of the paradigm to assess non-verbal action prediction and Theory of Mind. In a preregistered collaborative study including two of the original authors, we tested one hundred and sixty 24- to 26-month-olds across two locations using the original stimuli, procedure and analyses as closely as possible. We found no evidence for action anticipation: only roughly half of the infants looked to the location of an agent's impending action when action prediction did not require taking into account the agent's beliefs and a similar number when the agent held a false-belief. These results and other non-replications suggest that this paradigm does not reliably elicit action prediction and thus cannot assess false-belief understanding in 2-year-olds. While the present results do not support any claim regarding the presence or absence of Theory of Mind in infants, we conclude that an important piece of evidence that has to date supported arguments for the existence of this competence can no longer serve that function.

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