Journal article
Submentalizing or mentalizing in a Level 1 perspective-taking task: A cloak and goggles test.
- Abstract:
- It has been proposed that humans possess an automatic system to represent mental states ('implicit mentalizing'). The existence of an implicit mentalizing system has generated considerable debate however, centered on the ability of various experimental paradigms to demonstrate unambiguously such mentalizing. Evidence for implicit mentalizing has previously been provided by the 'dot perspective task,' where participants are slower to verify the number of dots they can see when an avatar can see a different number of dots. However, recent evidence challenged a mentalizing interpretation of this effect by showing it was unaltered when the avatar was replaced with an inanimate arrow stimulus. Here we present an extension of the dot perspective task using an invisibility cloaking device to render the dots invisible on certain trials. This paradigm is capable of providing unambiguous evidence of automatic mentalizing, but no such evidence was found. Two further well-powered experiments used opaque and transparent goggles to manipulate visibility but found no evidence of automatic mentalizing, nor of individual differences in empathy or perspective-taking predicting performance, contradicting previous studies using the same design. The results cast doubt on the existence of an implicit mentalizing system, suggesting that previous effects were due to domain-general processes. (PsycINFO Database Record
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 364.0KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1037/xhp0000319
Authors
- Publisher:
- American Psychological Association
- Journal:
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance More from this journal
- Volume:
- 43
- Issue:
- 3
- Pages:
- 454-465
- Publication date:
- 2016-11-01
- Acceptance date:
- 2016-08-29
- DOI:
- ISSN:
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1939-1277
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:684187
- UUID:
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uuid:0e3fd422-aec7-4870-832f-4722a09603ab
- Local pid:
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pubs:684187
- Source identifiers:
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684187
- Deposit date:
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2017-03-07
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Bird et al
- Copyright date:
- 2016
- Notes:
- This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s). Author(s) grant(s) the American Psychological Association the exclusive right to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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