Contextual influence over deriving another's false beliefs using a relational triangulation perspective taking...

The original relational triangulation perspective taking protocol (RT-PTP-M1; Guinther, ) was extended with a second training and testing module (RT-PTP-M2) showing contextual influence over derivation of another's "false beliefs" during an analog of the Sally-Anne test for Theory of Mind (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, ; Wimmer & Perner, ) in verbally competent adults. Under the respective contextual control of experimental stimuli X² and X³ , participants first learned through direct conditioning procedures that avatars A² and A³ "behave the same way" towards target stimuli. Participants then made object discriminations under X² according to the spatial perspective of A² , who saw an initial target at a particular location but could not see that the target was later swapped with a second target; reporting the identity of the initial target was reinforced for participants. Among participants who had failed baseline testing, this directly trained "false belief attribution" repertoire was then spontaneously emitted by participants relative to the perspective of A³ under X³ during the final test for derivation. Other participants were able to derive false belief under X³ without the X² attribution training. These results suggest the RT-PTP procedures were successful in causing X³ to acquire context-of-relating functions for exerting control over perspectival relational triangulation.