Theory of mind in animals: Current and future directions

an article by Christopher Krupenye and Josep Call (University of St Andrews, UK) published in WIREs Cognitive Science Volume 10 Issue 6 (November/December 2019)

Visual Abstract

Forty years of research has sought to determine whether nonhuman animals, like this bonobo, have a theory of mind.



Abstract

Theory of mind (ToM; a.k.a., mind‐reading, mentalizing, mental‐state attribution, and perspective‐taking) is the ability to ascribe mental states, such as desires and beliefs, to others, and it is central to the unique forms of communication, cooperation, and culture that define our species. As a result, for 40 years, researchers have endeavoured to determine whether ToM is itself unique to humans.

Investigations in other species (e.g., apes, monkeys, corvids) are essential to understand the mechanistic underpinnings and evolutionary origins of this capacity across taxa, including humans.

We review the literature on ToM in nonhuman animals, suggesting that some species share foundational social cognitive mechanisms with humans.

We focus principally on innovations of the last decade and pressing directions for future work. Underexplored types of social cognition have been targeted, including ascription of mental states, such as desires and beliefs, that require simultaneously representing one's own and another's conflicting motives or views of the world.

Ongoing efforts probe the motivational facets of ToM, how flexibly animals can recruit social cognitive skills across cooperative and competitive settings, and appropriate motivational contexts for comparative inquiry.

Finally, novel methodological and empirical approaches have brought new species (e.g., lemurs, dogs) into the lab, implemented critical controls to elucidate underlying mechanisms, and contributed powerful new techniques (e.g., looking‐time, eye‐tracking) that open the door to unexplored approaches for studying animal minds. These innovations in cognition, motivation, and method promise fruitful progress in the years to come, in understanding the nature and origin of ToM in humans and other species.

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The perks of being a bit neurotic

It's one of our five major personality traits, and arguably, it's the worst one. Why are some human beings neurotic?

a post by Matt Davis for the Big Think blog

• Scoring high in neuroticism is associated with a slew of negative outcomes for your physical and mental health.
• However, it appears to be an inherited trait, one that has persisted through the many thousands of years of human evolution.
• Some researchers argue that in the environment where humans first evolved, being a little neurotic may have been highly beneficial.

Continue reading

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The brain in the jar: a critique of discourses of adolescent brain development

an article by Peter Kelly (Alfred Deakin Research Institute, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia) published in Journal of Youth Studies Volume 15 Issue 7 (November 2012)

Abstract

This article suggests that ideas about adolescent brains and their development increasingly function as powerful truths in making sense of young people.

In this context, the knowledge practices of the neurosciences and evolutionary and developmental psychology are deemed capable of producing what we have come to understand as the evidence on which policy, interventions and education should be built.

I identify and explore the ways in which these knowledge practices produce this evidence, and the ways in which this evidence is translated into popular and policy discourses concerned with young people’s apparently risk-prone, impulsive and irrational behaviours and dispositions.

I argue that discourses of adolescent brain development disembody, reduce and simplify the complexities of these figures we know as adolescents. In effect they reduce young people to being little more than a brain in a jar.

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