2007 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Development and evolution of implicit understanding of others: Evolutionary and developmental study of implicit theory of mind.
| Project/Area Number |
16500161
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Cognitive science
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| Research Institution | Kyoto University |
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Principal Investigator |
ITAKURA Shoji Kyoto University, Graduate School of Letters, Associate Professor (50211735)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2004 – 2007
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| Keywords | Development / Evolution / Implicit theory of mind / Explicit theory of mind / False belief task / Social contingency / Inhibitory control |
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| Research Abstract |
In this project, I focused the evolution and development of implicit theory of mind rather than explicit theory of mind, in which the main task of explicit theory of mind is 'False Belief Task.' These implicit theory of mind and explicit theory of mind correspond to recent concept, dual process of social cognition. Gaze following, perception of biological motion, and face perception are categorized into implicit of theory of mind, and False Belief Task is categorized into explicit theory of mind. Formers are implicit process and the latter is higher order process. In here, I will summarize the outcome of the studies for 4 years below.
1) Human infants are highly sensitive to others' responses since very early period. This specific sensitivity makes them to communicate with their caregivers, such as turn taking. An appropriate response to infants are called "social contingency." In the previous study, infants show this kind of sensitivity from 4-month-olds. We demonstrated that even one-
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month-old infants have such sensitivity by employing double video paradigm, in where infant and mother communicate through the TV monitor.
2) Eye gaze is extraordinary important in our communication. Eye movement has been thought that it reflect the process of our thinking behavior, such as Lateral Eye Movement (LEM). In the current study, we recorded the direction of eye movement during face to face situation with social partner. Social partner (experimenter) gave two kinds of questions, such as knowledge questions and think questions. Knowledge question is to ask what the subject has already as a kind of knowledge. For example, "How old are you?" Think question is to ask what he/she has to think to answer. For example, "How far does the car which can move 60Km per hour go?" We found that the subject eyes moved down when he/she was given the think questions. This result was different from that of North American people. We concluded that this eye movement has function of social signal. We also employed and conducted same experiment, and we obtained similar results.
3) Human children developed their ability of inhibitory control during preschool hood. We tested the chimpanzee whether they can control according to the new rule in DCCS task, and are compared to the results of 5-year-old children. The chimpanzees' performance is just like 3-year-old children. Their ability of inhibitory control is constraint in some level. Less
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