Mindreading: Signature Limits, and Development

still on the same questions as earlier today

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To more fully specify mindreading we need a theory that specifies both the models and the processes involved in mindreading.

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A model is a way the world could logically be, or a set of ways the world could logically be. Some models can conveniently be specified by theories, others by equations. (Note that a model isn’t a theory, nor is it a set of equations.)

But why worry about models at all?

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tracking perceptions and beliefs—and even merely holding in mind what another believes, where no inference is required

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‘Fig. 3. Latency of decision window for the target as a function of cognitive load and presence of a competitor (Experiment 2).’

The task is a director study. ‘competitor present’ means there are two possible objects only one of which the director can see.

The ‘decision window’ in ‘the time difference between first noticing the target and finally reaching for it’

Note that the decision window widens under cognitive load only when a competitor object is present, i.e. only when the task requires perspective taking!

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Minimal theory of mind is the psychological equivalent of impetus mechanics.

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need to see whether it ACTUALLY IS

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There is some evidence that this prediction is correct. Jason Low and his collegaues set out to test it. They have now published three different papers showing such limits; and Hannes Rakoczy and others have more work in progress on this. Collapsing several experiements using different approaches, the basic pattern of their findings is this ...

Take non-automatic responses first; in this case, communicative responses. When you do a false-belief-identity task, you see the pattern you also find for false-belief-locations tasks. But things look different when you measure non-automatic responses ...

The non-automatic responses all show the signature limit of minimal models of the mental. This is evidence for the hypothesis that Some automatic belief-tracking systems rely on minimal models of the mental.

I also hear that quite a few scientists have pilot data that speaks against this signature limit.

One particular task for future research will be to examine whether other automatic responses to scenarios involving false beliefs about identity, such as response times and movement trajectories, are also subject to this signature limit.

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Windows light up, you will look in anticipation

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Another experiment got similar results (rabbits quack): this graph is nice because it illustrates how you can dissociate the proactive gaze from the verbal response (make it uniformly good, or uniformly bad)

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Just say that you can do this with other stimuli and paradigms, and we have done this with infants and would like to do it with adults.

These findings complicate the picture: is helping driven by automatic processes only? If not, why do we predict that the signature limit of minimal theory of mind is found in this case too?

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we confirmed the predictions!

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Here’s what the participants (P) see. They’re looking at a video of an agent (A). The person can see two balls. The subject can also see two balls.

You’re told that at the end of each clip, you will see either the red ball or the blue ball. You have to press a key corresponding to which ball you see. Ignore the agent. He’s completely irrelevant to the task.

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Key finding is P-A- vs P-A+

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automatic prediction

Edwards \& Low 2019 tests both predictions simultaneously.

(Long history that I’m not mentioning.)

Kovacs-like but with two balls, red and blue, always one goes. Beliefs concern which belief remains

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Key finding is P-A- vs P-A+

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Kovacs-like identity starring the robota

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we confirmed the predictions!

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from earlier we established automaticity

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answer to how distinguished: not just automaticity but also minimal models

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further evidence (only indirect) ...

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we confirmed the predictions!

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Any attempt to answer questions about when children first come to know facts about objects or minds immediately runs up against an initially puzzling pattern of findings. Suppose you ask when humans first know simple facts in a particular domain. If you measure responses such as verbal predictions (or final key presses given in response to verbal instructions), in almost any domain, you will find evidence for a developmental transition.

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Importantly, you will find this initially puzzling pattern even if you use the same scenario and subjects. For example, here is Jason who wants to retrieve a red robot from under of these boxes.

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When these windows light up, he will reach through one of these windows to retrieve it. In fact the red robot is in the right box. But Jason has a false belief about it’s location: he falsely believes that it is in the left box.

We can measure whether you take Jason’s belief into account in two ways. We can observe where you look in anticipation of Jason’s action when the windows light up (initial proactive gaze). And then, a few seconds later, we can ask you where you think Jason will look first.

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Extending groundbreaking work by Clements \& Perner (1994) and many following them, Low and colleagues have done several variations on this, with 3- and 4-year-olds as well as adults and found just the pattern here: an interaction with age.

At this point some are tempted to claim that this pattern of findings is not anomalous at all. It’s simply a consequence of the fact that the some responses provide a more sensitive measure of competence, or that other responses require some feature extraneous to the task.

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But this claim is less persuasive given a further piece of the evidence. For some carefully matched tasks, responses like initial proactive gaze and looking time indicate very poor, below chance performance. This is hard---not impossible, but hard---to reconcile with the claim that the these responses simply provide more sensitive measures. It is also hard to reconcile with the claim that the interaction with age is due to extraneous features introduced when responses like verbal prediction are involved.

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(Incidentally, I admint that I’m using a made up figure to illustrate a theoretical point. But it’s actually not too far from how real data from even a single study sometimes looks.)

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So this is my first question: Why is there an interaction with age?

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Look at the three year olds. What might make us think that three year old’s responses are a consequence of the same system that underpin’s adults’ automatic responses? One compelling consideration is that three year old’s responses manifest to the same signature limit as adults’.

same signature limit -> same process

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I already showed you the evidence on this.+

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Scott and colleagues (Scott, Richman, \& Baillargeon, 2015) provided other evidence suggesting that infants’ mindreading may be relatively sophisticated. Specifically, 17-month-olds watched a thief attempt to steal a preferred object (a rattling toy) when its owner was momentarily absent by substituting it with a less-preferred object (a non-rattling toy). Infants looked longer when the thief substituted the preferred object with a non-visually-matching silent toy compared to when the thief substituted it with a visually-matching silent toy. The authors postulated that infants can ascribe to the thief an intention to implant in the owner a false-belief about the identity of the substituted toy. The authors further suggested that infants make such ascriptions only when the substitution involves a visually-matching toy and the owner will not test whether the toy rattles on her return.

However, Scott et al.’s (Scott et al., 2015) explanations also require postulating that infants take the thief to be strikingly inept; despite having opportunity simply to pilfer from a closed box known to contain at least three rattling toys, the thief engages in elaborate deception which will be uncovered whenever the substituted toy is next shaken and the thief, as sole suspect, easily identified. A further difficulty is that factors unrelated to the thief’s mental states vary between conditions, such as the frequencies with which toys visually matching one present during the final phase of the test trial have rattled. These considerations jointly indicate that further evidence would be needed to support the claim that humans’ early mindreading capacity enables them to ascribe intentions concerning false beliefs involving numerical identity.

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It has to be said that not everyone is convinced ..

‘the theoretical arguments offered [...] are [...] unconvincing, and [...] the data can be explained in other terms’

(Carruthers, 2015; see also Carruthers, 2015a).

What is my response? Yes, the data can be explained in other terms, at least post hoc; and certainly there is as yet insufficient data for certainty. What about the theoretical arguments? Partners in crime defence ... theoretical arguments for multiple systems for belief are the same as the theoretical arguments for physical cognition or number cognition (but that’s a different talk).

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So this is my first question: Why is there an interaction with age?

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The model of minds and actions underpinning automatic mindreading process does not significantly change over development.

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By contrast, the model of minds and actions underpinning nonautomatic mindreading process does significantly change over development. In the first three or four years of life, nonautomatic mindreading processes involve relatively crude models of minds and actions, models which do not enable belief tracking. What changes over development is typically just that the model underpinning nonautomatic mindreading becomes gradually more sophisticated and eventually comes to enable belief tracking.

Conjecture: #. Automatic and nonautomatic mindreading processes both occur from the first year of life onwards. #. The model of minds and actions underpinning automatic mindreading process does not significantly change over development. #. In the first three or four years of life, nonautomatic mindreading processes involve relatively crude models of minds and actions, models which do not enable belief tracking. #. What changes over development is typically just that the model underpinning nonautomatic mindreading becomes gradually more sophisticated and eventually comes to enable belief tracking.

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There is what Low et al’s results are really showing us.

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same signature limit -> same process

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Back to the processes ...

Click here and press the right key for the next slide.

(This may not work on mobile or ipad. You can try using chrome or firefox, but even that may fail. Sorry.)

still on the same questions as earlier today

In which domains is there substantial evidence for a two systems theory?

And what are the best objections?

How are the two systems distinguished?

What, if any, kind of unity is there across domains?

Why are there two systems?

When, if ever, are two systems better than one?

How, if at all, do the two systems interact? What are the barriers to interaction between them?

To more fully specify mindreading we need a theory that specifies both the models and the processes involved in mindreading.

1. models

2. processes

nonautomatic mindreading involves

tracking perceptions and beliefs—and even merely holding in mind what another believes, where no inference is required

arbitrarily nested

propositional contents

uncodifiably complex causal interactions

normative constraints

...

Lin et al (2010, figure 3)

‘Fig. 3. Latency of decision window for the target as a function of cognitive load and presence of a competitor (Experiment 2).’

The task is a director study. ‘competitor present’ means there are two possible objects only one of which the director can see.

The ‘decision window’ in ‘the time difference between first noticing the target and finally reaching for it’

Note that the decision window widens under cognitive load only when a competitor object is present, i.e. only when the task requires perspective taking!

How could mindreading be fast + automatic?

process	model (physical)	model (mental)
fast	impetus	minimal theory of mind
slow	Newtonian	belief, desire, intention (?)

I also hear that quite a few scientists have pilot data that speaks against this signature limit.

we confirmed the predictions!

signature limits generate predictions

Hypothesis:

Some automatic belief-tracking processes rely on minimal models of the mental.

Hypothesis:

Some fast object-tracking processes rely on impetus mechanics.

Prediction:

Automatic belief-tracking is subject to the signature limits of minimal models.

Prediction:

Fast object-tracking is subject to the signature limits of impetus mechanics.

we confirmed the predictions!

signature limits generate predictions

Hypothesis:

Some automatic belief-tracking processes rely on minimal models of the mental.

Hypothesis:

Some fast object-tracking processes rely on impetus mechanics.

Prediction:

Automatic belief-tracking is subject to the signature limits of minimal models.

Prediction:

Fast object-tracking is subject to the signature limits of impetus mechanics.

Two Systems Theory of Mindreading

Two (or more) processes concerning X are distinct:
the conditions which influence whether they occur,
and which outputs they generate,
do not completely overlap.

One process makes fewer demands on scarce cognitive resources than the other.

(Terminology: fast vs slow)

answer to how distinguished: not just automaticity but also minimal models

In which domains is there substantial evidence for a two systems theory?

And what are the best objections?

How are the two systems distinguished?

What, if any, kind of unity is there across domains?

Why are there two systems?

When, if ever, are two systems better than one?

How, if at all, do the two systems interact? What are the barriers to interaction between them?

we confirmed the predictions!

signature limits generate predictions

Hypothesis:

Some automatic belief-tracking processes rely on minimal models of the mental.

Hypothesis:

Some fast object-tracking processes rely on impetus mechanics.

Prediction:

Automatic belief-tracking is subject to the signature limits of minimal models.

Prediction:

Fast object-tracking is subject to the signature limits of impetus mechanics.

Extending groundbreaking work by Clements & Perner (1994) and many following them, Low and colleagues have done several variations on this, with 3- and 4-year-olds as well as adults and found just the pattern here: an interaction with age.

signature limits generate predictions

Hypothesis:

Some automatic belief-tracking processes rely on minimal models of the mental.

Prediction:

Automatic belief-tracking is subject to the signature limits of minimal models.

Scott et al (2015, figure 2b)

Scott and colleagues (Scott, Richman, & Baillargeon, 2015) provided other evidence suggesting that infants’ mindreading may be relatively sophisticated. Specifically, 17-month-olds watched a thief attempt to steal a preferred object (a rattling toy) when its owner was momentarily absent by substituting it with a less-preferred object (a non-rattling toy). Infants looked longer when the thief substituted the preferred object with a non-visually-matching silent toy compared to when the thief substituted it with a visually-matching silent toy. The authors postulated that infants can ascribe to the thief an intention to implant in the owner a false-belief about the identity of the substituted toy. The authors further suggested that infants make such ascriptions only when the substitution involves a visually-matching toy and the owner will not test whether the toy rattles on her return.

It has to be said that not everyone is convinced ..

Objection:

‘the theoretical arguments offered [...] are [...] unconvincing, and [...] the data can be explained in other terms’

(Carruthers, 2015; see also Carruthers, 2015a).

Carruthers (2015)

signature limits generate predictions

Hypothesis:

Some automatic belief-tracking processes rely on minimal models of the mental.

Hypothesis:

Infants’ belief-tracking abilities involve fast processes and only fast processes.

Prediction:

Automatic belief-tracking is subject to the signature limits of minimal models.

Prediction:

Infants’ belief-tracking is subject to the signature limits of minimal models.

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