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

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.

Childhood Maltreatment Consequences on Social Pragmatic Communication: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Purpose Maltreatment is a threat to child health and well-being and negatively influences all aspects of development, including language. Less seems to be known about the consequences that maltreatment has on social pragmatic communication. A systematic review of the literature was performed to summarize existing empirical research on complex trauma (the impact of maltreatment, including abuse and neglect, in the caregiving system) on social pragmatic communication of children and youth. The goal of this review article was to review the empirical evidence of the association between maltreatment and social pragmatic communication profiles of children. Method Research articles published between 1974, when the first comprehensive law of child protection was enacted, and 2020 were reviewed. Seven electronic databases were used to conduct the search for literature using several combined concepts related to social pragmatic communication and maltreatment. The inclusion criteria were that articles addressed any form of maltreatment, included participants aged 18 years or younger, and primarily focused on the impact of maltreatment on social pragmatic communication and that their method and findings were based on an experimental study. Studies were excluded if they were written in a language other than English, focused on adults, did not include the social pragmatic communication and maltreatment concepts, were a systematic review or meta-analysis, or were a theoretical rather than experimental study. A modified version of the Primary Research Appraisal Tool was used to determine key characteristics of each article. Results Thirty-eight articles met inclusion criteria for this study. Findings of these studies provide evidence that maltreatment has an impact on social pragmatic communication including social cognition, perspective taking, and belief attribution; executive functions including working memory; and pragmatic language including narrative discourse and the use of varied communicative functions. Conclusions The major findings have implications for knowledge and skills of speech-language and hearing professionals working with children and adolescents and for the type of assessment and intervention processes used to assess social pragmatic communication. Suggestions for future studies are provided.

Politics of Folk Psychology: Believing What Others Believe

In this paper, I argue that by attributing beliefs the attributer is pushed toward taking a stand on the content of those beliefs and that what stand they take partially depends on the relationship between the attributer and the attributee. In particular, if the attributee enjoys a higher social standing than the attributer, the latter is disposed to adopt the attributed belief, as long as certain other conditions are met. I will call this view the Adoption-by-Attribution model. Because of the non-epistemic influence that derives from the relation of inequality, belief attribution can reinforce the existing unequal power relations and contribute to epistemic injustice.

Knowledge and the Brain: Why the Knowledge-Centric Theory of Mind Program Needs Neuroscience

The knowledge-centric Theory of Mind research program suggested by Phillips et al. stands to gain significant value by embracing a neurocognitive approach that takes full advantage of techniques like fMRI and EEG. This neurocognitive approach has already begun providing important insights into the mechanisms of knowledge attribution, insights which support the claim that it is more basic than belief attribution.

Evolutionary foundations of knowledge and belief attribution in nonhuman primates

Recent findings from anticipatory-looking false-belief tests have shown that nonhuman great apes and macaques anticipate that an agent will go to the location where the agent falsely believed an object to be. Phillips et al.'s claim that nonhuman primates attribute knowledge but not belief should thus be reconsidered. We propose that both knowledge and belief attributions are evolutionary old.

Why is knowledge faster than (true) belief?

Phillips and colleagues convincingly argue that knowledge attribution is a faster, more automatic form of mindreading than belief attribution. However, they do not explain what it is about knowledge attribution that lends it this cognitive advantage. I suggest an explanation of the knowledge-attribution advantage that would also help to distinguish it from belief-based and minimalist alternatives.

Semantic memory before episodic memory: How memory research can inform knowledge and belief representations

Knowledge and belief attribution are discussed in the context of episodic and semantic memory theory and research, with reference to patient-lesion and developmental studies under naturalistic conditions. Consideration of how episodic and semantic memory relate to each other and intersect in the real world, including how they fail, can illuminate the approach to studying how people represent others' minds.

Knowledge and the brain: Why the knowledge-centric theory of mind program needs neuroscience

The knowledge-centric theory of mind research program suggested by Phillips et al. stands to gain significant value by embracing a neurocognitive approach that takes full advantage of techniques such as fMRI and EEG. This neurocognitive approach has already begun providing important insights into the mechanisms of knowledge attribution, insights which support the claim that it is more basic than belief attribution.

A two-lab direct replication attempt of Southgate, Senju, & Csibra (2007)

The study by Southgate, V., Senju, A., and Csibra, G. (Southgate et al., 2007) 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 were unable to replicate the original finding, 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 160 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 in anticipation 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 the paradigm does not reliably elicit action prediction and thus cannot assess false belief understanding in 2- year-old children. While the results of the current study 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.