title: A Second Look at Automatic Theory of Mind: Reconsidering Kovács, Téglás, and Endress (2010).
abstract: In recent work, Kovács, Téglás, and Endress (2010) argued that human adults automatically represented other agents' beliefs even when those beliefs were completely irrelevant to the task being performed. In a series of 13 experiments, we replicated these previous findings but demonstrated that the effects found arose from artifacts in the experimental paradigm. In particular, the critical findings demonstrating automatic belief computation were driven by inconsistencies in the timing of an attention check, and thus do not provide evidence for automatic theory of mind in adults.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University Department of Philosophy, Yale University phillips01@g.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Phillips
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stanford University.
authors.forename: Desmond C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Ong
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Birmingham.
authors.forename: Andrew D R
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Surtees
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
authors.forename: Yijing
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xin
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
authors.forename: Samantha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Saxe
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stanford University.
authors.forename: Michael C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Frank
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012938:Social Perception; D056345:Theory of Mind
keywords: automaticity; false belief; open data; open materials; replication; theory of mind