Signature Limits

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Signature Limits

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signature limits generate predictions

Hypothesis:

Infants’ belief-tracking abilities rely on minimal models of the mental.

Prediction:

Infants’ belief-tracking is subject to the signature limits of minimal models.

There is some evidence that this prediction is correct. Jason Low and his collegaues set out to test it. They have now published three different papers showing such limits; and Hannes Rakoczy and others have more work in progress on this. Collapsing several experiements using different approaches, the basic pattern of their findings is this ...

Take non-automatic responses first; in this case, communicative responses. When you do a false-belief-identity task, you see the pattern you also find for false-belief-locations tasks. But things look different when you measure non-automatic responses ...

The non-automatic responses all show the signature limit of minimal models of the mental. This is evidence for the hypothesis that Some automatic belief-tracking systems rely on minimal models of the mental.

I also hear that quite a few scientists have pilot data that speaks against this signature limit.

One particular task for future research will be to examine whether other automatic responses to scenarios involving false beliefs about identity, such as response times and movement trajectories, are also subject to this signature limit.

Windows light up, you will look in anticipation

Objection

‘the Low and Watts (2013) paradigm was robustly replicated’

but ...

‘the original pattern of belief-congruent looking could be reproduced only under conditions in which the belief congruency of the locations is confounded with additional factors, and therefore, this pattern might not reflect belief-based anticipation’ (Kulke, von Duhn, Schneider, & Rakoczy, 2018, p. 9).

Low et al, 2014 figure 2

Another experiment got similar results (rabbits quack): this graph is nice because it illustrates how you can dissociate the proactive gaze from the verbal response (make it uniformly good, or uniformly bad)

Just say that you can do this with other stimuli and paradigms, and we have done this with infants and would like to do it with adults.

These findings complicate the picture: is helping driven by automatic processes only? If not, why do we predict that the signature limit of minimal theory of mind is found in this case too?

signature limits generate predictions

Hypothesis:

Infants’ belief-tracking abilities rely on minimal models of the mental.

Prediction:

Infants’ belief-tracking is subject to the signature limits of minimal models.

Look at the three year olds. What might make us think that three year old’s responses are a consequence of the same system that underpin’s adults’ automatic responses? One compelling consideration is that three year old’s responses manifest to the same signature limit as adults’.

reidentifying systems:

same signature limit -> same process

Scott et al (2015, figure 2b)

Scott and colleagues (Scott, Richman, & Baillargeon, 2015) provided other evidence suggesting that infants’ mindreading may be relatively sophisticated. Specifically, 17-month-olds watched a thief attempt to steal a preferred object (a rattling toy) when its owner was momentarily absent by substituting it with a less-preferred object (a non-rattling toy). Infants looked longer when the thief substituted the preferred object with a non-visually-matching silent toy compared to when the thief substituted it with a visually-matching silent toy. The authors postulated that infants can ascribe to the thief an intention to implant in the owner a false-belief about the identity of the substituted toy. The authors further suggested that infants make such ascriptions only when the substitution involves a visually-matching toy and the owner will not test whether the toy rattles on her return.

However, Scott et al.’s (Scott et al., 2015) explanations also require postulating that infants take the thief to be strikingly inept; despite having opportunity simply to pilfer from a closed box known to contain at least three rattling toys, the thief engages in elaborate deception which will be uncovered whenever the substituted toy is next shaken and the thief, as sole suspect, easily identified. A further difficulty is that factors unrelated to the thief’s mental states vary between conditions, such as the frequencies with which toys visually matching one present during the final phase of the test trial have rattled. These considerations jointly indicate that further evidence would be needed to support the claim that humans’ early mindreading capacity enables them to ascribe intentions concerning false beliefs involving numerical identity.

It has to be said that not everyone is convinced ..

Objection:

‘the theoretical arguments offered [...] are [...] unconvincing, and [...] the data can be explained in other terms’

(Carruthers, 2015; see also Carruthers, 2015a).

Carruthers (2015)

What is my response? Yes, the data can be explained in other terms, at least post hoc; and certainly there is as yet insufficient data for certainty. What about the theoretical arguments? Partners in crime defence ... theoretical arguments for multiple systems for belief are the same as the theoretical arguments for physical cognition or number cognition (but that’s a different talk).

signature limits generate predictions

Hypothesis:

Infants’ belief-tracking abilities rely on minimal models of the mental.

Prediction:

Infants’ belief-tracking is subject to the signature limits of minimal models.

But this is the key thing.

Two questions: 1. How do observations about tracking support conclusions about representing? 2. Why are there dissociations in nonhuman apes’, human infants’ and human adults’ performance on belief-tracking tasks?

How do observations about tracking support conclusions about representing models?

Why are there dissociations in nonhuman apes’, human infants’ and human adults’ performance on belief-tracking tasks?

So the method of signature limits allows us to answer the question, How do observations about tracking support conclusions about models?

This is important because it means we can answer questions about models of mind without relying merely on philosophical methods like informal observation and guess work.

But what about our other question

It is important that conjectures about models cannot answer this question. We need to switch from models to processes.

A-tasks

Children fail

because they rely on a model of minds and actions that does not incorporate beliefs

Children fail A-tasks because they rely on a model of minds and actions that does not incorporate beliefs.

non-A-tasks

Children pass

by relying on a model of minds and actions that does incorporate beliefs

Children pass non-A-tasks by relying on a model of minds and actions that does incorporate beliefs.

dogma

the

of mindreading

The dogma of mindreading (momentary version): any individual has at most one model of minds and actions at any one point in time.

There is also a developmental version of the dogma: the developmental dogma is that there is either just one model or else a family of models where one of the models, the best and most sophisticated model, contains all of the states that are contained in any of the models.

Minimal theory of mind is sufficient for success on A-tasks!

1. models [done]

2. processes

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Signature Limits

Signature Limits

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