TY - JOUR
T1 - Learning to apply theory of mind
AU - Verbrugge, Rineke
AU - Mol, Lisette
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We would like to express our gratitude to Petra Hendriks, who has been the insightful co-supervisor of Lisette Mol’s Master’s research project in 2004 and co-author of (Mol et al. 2005). We would also like to thank Niels Taatgen, co-author of (Mol et al. 2005). Furthermore, Rineke Verb-rugge gratefully acknowledges the NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences) and NWO (the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, grants 051-04-120 and 400-05-710) for enabling her to work on this article as a NIAS fellow of the thematic group ‘Games, Action and Social Software’. Finally, we would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their useful criticisms and suggestions.
PY - 2008/10
Y1 - 2008/10
N2 - In everyday life it is often important to have a mental model of the knowledge, beliefs, desires, and intentions of other people. Sometimes it is even useful to to have a correct model of their model of our own mental states: a second-order Theory of Mind. In order to investigate to what extent adults use and acquire complex skills and strategies in the domains of Theory of Mind and the related skill of natural language use, we conducted an experiment. It was based on a strategic game of imperfect information, in which it was beneficial for participants to have a good mental model of their opponent, and more specifically, to use second-order Theory of Mind. It was also beneficial for them to be aware of pragmatic inferences and of the possibility to choose between logical and pragmatic language use. We found that most participants did not seem to acquire these complex skills during the experiment when being exposed to the game for a number of different trials. Nevertheless, some participants did make use of advanced cognitive skills such as second-order Theory of Mind and appropriate choices between logical and pragmatic language use from the beginning. Thus, the results differ markedly from previous research.
AB - In everyday life it is often important to have a mental model of the knowledge, beliefs, desires, and intentions of other people. Sometimes it is even useful to to have a correct model of their model of our own mental states: a second-order Theory of Mind. In order to investigate to what extent adults use and acquire complex skills and strategies in the domains of Theory of Mind and the related skill of natural language use, we conducted an experiment. It was based on a strategic game of imperfect information, in which it was beneficial for participants to have a good mental model of their opponent, and more specifically, to use second-order Theory of Mind. It was also beneficial for them to be aware of pragmatic inferences and of the possibility to choose between logical and pragmatic language use. We found that most participants did not seem to acquire these complex skills during the experiment when being exposed to the game for a number of different trials. Nevertheless, some participants did make use of advanced cognitive skills such as second-order Theory of Mind and appropriate choices between logical and pragmatic language use from the beginning. Thus, the results differ markedly from previous research.
KW - Epistemic logic
KW - Pragmatics
KW - Skill acquisition
KW - Strategic reasoning
KW - Theory of Mind
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=50849098486&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10849-008-9067-4
DO - 10.1007/s10849-008-9067-4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:50849098486
SN - 0925-8531
VL - 17
SP - 489
EP - 511
JO - Journal of Logic, Language and Information
JF - Journal of Logic, Language and Information
IS - 4
ER -