title: Can We Forget What We Know in a False-Belief Task? An Investigation of the True-Belief Default.
abstract: It has been generally assumed in the Theory of Mind literature of the past 30 years that young children fail standard false-belief tasks because they attribute their own knowledge to the protagonist (what Leslie and colleagues called a "true-belief default"). Contrary to the traditional view, we have recently proposed that the children's bias is task induced. This alternative view was supported by studies showing that 3 year olds are able to pass a false-belief task that allows them to focus on the protagonist, without drawing their attention to the target object in the test phase. For a more accurate comparison of these two accounts, the present study tested the true-belief default with adults. Four experiments measuring eye movements and response inhibition revealed that (a) adults do not have an automatic tendency to respond to the false-belief question according to their own knowledge and (b) the true-belief response need not be inhibited in order to correctly predict the protagonist's actions. The positive results observed in the control conditions confirm the accuracy of the various measures used. I conclude that the results of this study undermine the true-belief default view and those models that posit mechanisms of response inhibition in false-belief reasoning. Alternatively, the present study with adults and recent studies with children suggest that participants' focus of attention in false-belief tasks may be key to their performance.
authors.affiliation: Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo.
authors.forename: Paula
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rubio-Fernández
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Competition for attention; Eye tracking; Sally-Anne task; Theory of Mind; True-belief bias