Section 13.1
• What is pretend play? Why does Leslie think that it is important?
• What are metarepresentations? How do they differ from primary representations?
• What is the connection between mindreading and pretend play?
Section 13.2
• What is the false belief test? Do you think it is a good test of mindreading abilities?
• Why do Onishi and Baillargeon think that prelinguistic infants can understand false belief?
• Is there a useful distinction to be drawn between implicit and explicit understandings of false belief?
Section 13.3
• What are the principal components of the mindreading system, according to Baron-Cohen’s model?
• Why is joint visual attention important in the development of mindreading?
Section 13.4
• What are the key differences between standard simulationism and radical simulationism? Do you find either of them a plausible way of thinking about mindreading?
Section 13.5
• Can you think of ways to use functional neuroimaging to explore the neural basis of mindreading, besides those discussed in the text?
• What can we learn from experiments on mirror neurons?
• What are paired deficits? Why are they significant?
Robert Seyfarth: Theory of Mind (video from YouTube)
The “False Belief” Test: Theory of Mind (video from YouTube)
The erosion of empathy (TEDtalk by Simon Baron-Cohen)
How we read each other’s minds (TED talk by Rebecca Saxe)
Autism: The First Fifty Years (video lecture by Uta Frith from YouTube Harvard University channel)
New development in theory of mind (video lecture by Chris Frith, 2011)
The neurons that shaped civilization (TED talk by Vilayanur Ramachandran)
13.1 Pretend Play and Metarepresentation
Cognitive Development Laboratory Rutgers University (website from Alan Leslie’s lab, including links to publications)
Pretense and representation: The origins of “theory of mind” (paper by Leslie, 1987, in Psychological Review)
Inhibitory processing in the false belief task: Two conjectures (paper by Leslie and Polizzi, 1998, in Developmental Science)
How to acquire a ‘representational theory of mind’ (book chapter by Leslie, 2000,in Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective)
Core mechanisms in ‘theory of mind’ (paper by Leslie et al., 2004, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
Belief-desire reasoning as a process of selection (paper by Leslie et al., 2005, in Cognitive Psychology)
The conceptual underpinnings of pretense: Pretending is not ‘behaving-as-if’ (paper by Friedman and Leslie, 2007, in Cognition)
Consider the source: The evolution of adaptations for decoupling and metarepresentation (book chapter by Cosmides and Tooby, 2000, in Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective)
Metarepresentations in an evolutionary perspective (book chapter by Sperber, 2000, in Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective)
Pretend play: Is it metarepresentational? (paper by Jarrold et al., 1994, in Mind and Language)
Pretend play as Twin Earth: A social-cognitive analysis (paper by Lillard, 2001, in Developmental Review)
Why do the children (pretend) play? (paper by Lillard, 2017, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
The evolutionary significance of pretend play: Two-year-olds’ interpretation of behavioral cues (paper by Ma and Lillard, 2017, in Learning & Behavior)
Dramatic pretend play games uniquely improve emotional control in young children (paper by Goldstein and Lerner, 2018, in Developmental Science)
13.2 Metarepresentation, Autism, and Theory of Mind
Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of theory of mind (paper by Bloom and German, 2000, in Cognition)
Autism Research Centre (website from Simon Baron-Cohen’s research group)
Do 15-Month-Old Infants Understand False Beliefs? (paper by Onishi and Baillargeon, 2005, in Science)
Do infants really understand false belief?: Response to Leslie (paper by Ruffman and Perner, 2005, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
Do infants have a theory of mind? (paper by Rakoczy, 2012, in British Journal of Developmental Psychology)
False belief in infancy: a fresh look (paper by Heyes, 2014, in Developmental Science)
False-belief understanding in infants (paper by Baillargeon et al., 2010, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
Toward a Mentalistic Account of Early Psychological Reasoning (paper by Luo and Baillargeon, 2010, in Current Directions in Psychological Science)
From infants’ to children’s appreciation of belief (paper by Perner and Roessler, 2012, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
Mindreading in Infancy (paper by Carruthers, 2013, in Mind & Language)
The robustness and generalizability of findings on spontaneous false belief sensitivity: a replication attempt (paper by Schuwerk et al., 2018, in Royal Society Open Science)
Actions do not speak louder than words in an interactive false belief task (paper by Wenzel et al., 2020, in Royal Society Open Science)
Infants’ performance in spontaneous-response false belief tasks: A review and meta-analysis (paper by Barone et al., 2019, in Infant Behavior and Development)
Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”? (paper by Baron-Cohen et al., 1985, in Cognition)
Exploration of the autistic child’s theory of mind: Knowledge, belief, and communication (paper by Perner et al., 1989, in Child Development)
Pretense, autism, and the theory (paper by Leslie, 1992, in Current Directions in Psychological Science)
Autism: the empathizing-systemizing (E-S) theory (paper by Baron-Cohen, 2009, in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)
Interventions based on the Theory of Mind cognitive model for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (review paper by Fletcher-Watson et al., 2014, in Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews)
Theories of the autistic mind (paper by Baron-Cohen, 2008, in The Psychologist)
How impaired is mind-reading in high-functioning adolescents and adults with autism? (paper by Roeyers and Denurie, 2010, in European Journal of Developmental Psychology)
A review of joint attention and social-cognitive brain systems in typical development and autism spectrum disorder (paper by Mundy, 2018, in European Journal of Neuroscience)
13.3 The Mindreading System
Does the autistic child have a metarepresentational deficit? (paper by Leekam and Perner, 1991, in Cognition)
Pretending and believing: issues in the theory of ToMM (paper by Leslie, 1994, in Cognition)
The eye direction detector (EDD) and the shared attention mechanism (SAM): Two cases for evolutionary psychology (book chapter by Baron-Cohen, 1995, in Joint attention: Its origins and role in development)
The evolution of a theory of mind (book chapter by Baron-Cohen, 1999, in The Descent of Mind)
“Theory of mind” as a mechanism of selective attention (book chapter by Leslie, 2000, in The New Cognitive Neurosciences)
Intentionality detection and “mindreading”: Why does game form matter? (paper by McCabe et al., 2000, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
The empathizing system (book chapter by Baron-Cohen, 2005, in Origins of the social mind: Evolutionary psychology and child development)
Attention, joint attention, and social cognition (paper by Mundy abd Newell, 2007, in Current Directions in Psychological Science)
Relationships between implicit and explicit uncertainty monitoring and mindreading: Evidence from autism spectrum disorder (paper by Nicholson et al., 2019, in Consciousness and Cognition)
Linking Metacognition and Mindreading: Evidence From Autism and Dual-Task Investigations (paper by Nicholson et al., 2021, in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General)
13.4 Mindreading as Simulation
Folk psychology as mental simulation (entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Mindreading: Mental state ascription and cognitive architecture (paper by Cruz, 1998, in Mind and Language)
13.5 The Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindreading
Mirror neurons (entry from Scholarpedia)
Frontal and Temporo-Parietal Lobe Contributions to Theory of Mind: Neuropsychological Evidence from a False-Belief Task with Reduced Language and Executive Demands (paper by Apperly et al., 2004, in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience)
Left temporoparietal junction is necessary for representing someone else’s belief (paper by Samson et al., 2004, in Nature Neuroscience)
Seeing it my way: a case of a selective deficit in inhibiting self-perspective (paper by Samson et al., 2005, in Brain)
Understanding other minds: Linking developmental psychology and functional neuroimaging (paper by Saxe et al., 2004, in Annual Review of Psychology)
People Thinking about Thinking People: The Role of the Temporo-Parietal Junction in “Theory of Mind” (book chapter by Saxe and Kanwisher, 2005, in Social Neuroscience: Key Readings)
Neural correlates of anchoring-and-adjustment during mentalizing (paper by Tamir and Mitchell, 2010, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
Two Mechanisms for Simulating Other Minds : Dissociations Between Mirroring and Self-Projection (paper by Waytz and Mitchell, 2011, in Current Directions in Psychological Science)
The Social Brain: Neural Basis of Social Knowledge (review paper by Adolphs, 2009, in Annual Review of Psychology)
Are there theory of mind regions in the brain? A review of the neuroimaging literature (paper by Carrington and Bailey, 2009, in Human Brain Mapping)
Mechanisms of Social Cognition (paper by Frith and Frith, 2012, in Annual Review of Psychology)
An evaluation of neurocognitive models of theory of mind (paper by Schurz and Perner, 2015, in Frontiers in Psychology)
Domain-specificity and theory of mind: evaluating neuropsychological evidence (paper by Apperly et al., 2005, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
The functional role of the parieto-frontal mirror circuit: interpretations and misinterpretations (paper by Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2010, in Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
The mirror mechanism: recent findings and perspectives (paper by Rizzolatti and Fogassi, 2014, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London)
Mirror neurons: From origin to function (paper by Cook et al., 2014, in Behavioral and Brain Sciences)
What We Know Currently about Mirror Neurons (review paper by Kilner and Lemon, 2013, in Current Biology)
What Happened to Mirror Neurons? (review paper by Heyes and Catmur, 2022, in Perspectives on Psychological Science)
Continuing to look in the mirror: A review of neuroscientific evidence for the broken mirror hypothesis, EP-M model and STORM model of autism spectrum conditions (paper by Yates and Hobson, 2020, in Autism)
Mirror neurons 30 years later: implications and applications (paper by Bonini et al., 2022, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
