ManyBabies 2: Theory of Mind in Infancy

• In Event: 3-145 - ManyBabies: Bringing large-scale collaborative projects to infant development research

Integrative Statement

Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to attribute mental states such as beliefs, desires and intentions to others and ourselves, is fundamental to human nature and social life. At the heart of ToM lies meta-representation, or the understanding that agents may represent the world accurately or inaccurately. Classic “false belief” tests of ToM are solved by children around age 4, and require that children verbally report how someone will act based on their (mis)representation of reality; for example, searching for an object where someone last saw it as opposed to where it actually is (Wellman et al., 2001). Recently, a variety of spontaneous response tasks (Buttelmann et al., 2009; Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005; Southgate et al., 2007) including anticipatory looking, violation of expectation, and more interactive measures such as helping, suggest that even infants in their first two years may be sensitive to others’ false beliefs. These findings have constituted the basis of new theoretical accounts of ToM development (e.g., Apperly & Butterfill, 2009; Perner & Roessler, 2012; Scott & Baillargeon, 2017). That said, multiple partial or failed replications have recently called the robustness of these findings into question (Burnside et al., 2017; Dörrenberg et al., 2017; Grosse Wiesmann et al., 2016; Kulke & Rakoczy, 2017; Kulke et al., 2018, Powell et al., 2017; Priewasser et al., 2017; Schuwerk et al., 2018). The current empirical situation is complex and puzzling, and has triggered a debate about the robustness of infant ToM (Baillargeon et al., 2018).

To address this controversy, relevant authors have come together for ManyBabies2, a multi-lab initiative to assess the reliability of spontaneous response ToM tasks. The initiative will, first, coordinate a large-scale conceptual replication of anticipatory looking based on attributions of false beliefs in 18-36-month-olds and adults (based on Southgate et al., 2007; Surian & Geraci, 2012; Schneider et al., 2011). Specifically, anticipatory looks will be recorded while participants watch pairs of “true belief” and “false belief” events. In each condition a Chaser tries to catch a Chasee, who either changes his location to a new hiding place onscreen while the Chaser cannot see, or leaves the stage entirely while the Chaser cannot see. We will explore whether toddlers and adults correctly anticipate that the Chaser will look for the Chasee where he last saw him. Methodological decisions were made collectively and reflect the diverse views of the group. After initial data is collected, potential follow-up studies will be designed to control for possible alternative explanations (e.g., Kulke et al., 2018; Phillips et al., 2015).

This talk will present our stimuli as well as results from pilot participants acquired by a handful of participating labs. Theoretical and methodological implications of these results will be discussed. We hope to receive feedback on our pilot data and to encourage additional laboratories to participate in advance of the start of large-scale data collection (which we anticipate will begin shortly after SRCD).

Authors

• Dora Kampis, University of Copenhagen
  Presenting Author

• Kiley Hamlin, University of British Columbia
  Non-Presenting Author