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Knowledge before belief.

Jonathan Phillips1, Wesley Buckwalter2, Fiery Cushman3

  • 1Program in Cognitive Science, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH03755, USAjonathan.s.phillips@dartmouth.edu; http://phillab.host.dartmouth.edu/.

The Behavioral and Brain Sciences
|September 8, 2020
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Knowledge, not belief, appears to be the foundational element in understanding others' minds. This research suggests knowledge representation is more basic in cognitive development and function.

Keywords:
belieffactivityfalse beliefknowledgeknowledge-firsttheory of mind

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Comparative Psychology

Background:

  • Theory of Mind research traditionally prioritizes belief representations.
  • Knowledge representations are often viewed as secondary to belief representations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether belief or knowledge representations are more fundamental in Theory of Mind.
  • To explore the developmental and comparative basis of knowledge versus belief attribution.

Main Methods:

  • Cross-species comparisons (nonhuman primates).
  • Developmental studies in human infants.
  • Neuropsychological assessments in patient populations.
  • Reaction time and automaticity measures.

Main Results:

  • Nonhuman primates attribute knowledge, not belief.
  • Knowledge representation emerges earlier in human development than belief representation.
  • Knowledge attribution is more automatic and faster than belief attribution.
  • Knowledge representations are factive and non-modality-specific.

Conclusions:

  • Knowledge representation is a more basic component of Theory of Mind than belief representation.
  • The primary function of knowledge representation is facilitating social learning about the external world.
  • Theory of Mind should be understood in relation to the actual world, not independently.