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Do humans have two systems to track beliefs and belief-like states?
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Apperly, Ian and Butterfill, Stephen A. (Stephen Andrew). (2009) Do humans have two systems to track beliefs and belief-like states? Psychological Review, Vol.116 (No.4). pp. 953-970. ISSN 0033-295X
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0016923
Abstract
The lack of consensus on how to characterize humans' capacity for belief reasoning has been brought into sharp focus by recent research. Children fail critical tests of belief reasoning before 3 to 4 years of age (H. Wellman, D. Cross, & J. Watson, 2001; H. Wimmer & J. Perner, 1983), yet infants apparently pass false-belief tasks at 13 or 15 months (K. H. Onishi & R. Baillargeon, 2005; L. Surian, S. Caldi, & D. Sperber, 2007). Nonhuman animals also fail critical tests of belief reasoning but can show very complex social behavior (e.g., J. Call & A Tomasello, 2005). Fluent social interaction in adult humans implies efficient processing of beliefs, yet direct tests suggest that belief reasoning is cognitively demanding, even for adults (e.g., I. A. Apperly, D. Samson, & G. W. Humphreys, 2009). The authors interpret these findings by drawing an analogy with the domain of number cognition, where similarly contrasting results have been observed. They propose that the success of infants and nonhuman animals on some belief reasoning tasks may be best explained by a cognitively efficient but inflexible capacity for tracking belief-like states. In humans, this capacity persists in parallel with a later-developing, more flexible but more cognitively demanding theory-of-mind abilities.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BD Speculative Philosophy B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Philosophy |
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Philosophy of mind, Belief and doubt, Reasoning |
| Journal or Publication Title: | Psychological Review |
| Publisher: | American Psychological Association |
| ISSN: | 0033-295X |
| Date: | October 2009 |
| Volume: | Vol.116 |
| Number: | No.4 |
| Number of Pages: | 18 |
| Page Range: | pp. 953-970 |
| Identification Number: | 10.1037/a0016923 |
| Status: | Peer Reviewed |
| Publication Status: | Published |
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
| URI: | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/17110 |
Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge
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