Mindreading as asynchronous coordination: The MAC account of theory of mind performance, and individual differences

Research on mindreading has been dominated by questions about the presence, absence or nature of mindreading concepts or structures, and by paradigms designed to create the most favourable circumstances for demonstrating such abilities. This focus on competence has led to a neglect of questions about performance. Yet without a theory of performance, mindreading concepts and structures are incapable of explaining how we ascribe particular thoughts and feelings to other people, and it is impossible to explain individual differences in mindreading that are persistent, robust, specific, and consequential for social abilities. We reconsider the theoretical foundations of mindreading to develop an account on which competent mindreading requires generating and selecting mental states that can be recognised as plausible and appropriate by other people, and so is essentially a coordination activity. It is asynchronous coordination because, once learned, it can be performed alone. The MAC (Mindreading as Asynchronous Coordination) account explains how mindreading serves as a mediator in human social lives, is shaped by social experience, varies according to that experience, and enables social abilities that would not be the same without its mediating role. The MAC account can explain a swath of existing findings about individual differences in mindreading that are otherwise puzzling. It provides a framework for understanding how and why mindreading abilities might vary across the lifespan, and for developing interpretable and psychometrically robust measures to study this variation.