Characteristics of current tasks that contribute to mentalizing judgments: does the engagement of the participants in the social interaction matter? Comment on Achim et al. (2013)

Abstract

In a recent article, Achim et al. (2013) discussed the different sources of information that contribute to mentalizing judgments in current theory-of-mind (ToM) tasks. The authors rightly emphasized the dynamic aspect of real-life social interaction, suggesting that taking account of the ongoing changes occurring during social interaction would make ToM tasks more ecological. They proposed a framework (i.e., the Eight Sources of Information Framework) that specifies the 8 sources of information we get from the environment and/or from our memories to attribute mental states to others. Nevertheless, we believe that a central aspect of ToM is missing in this framework: the engagement (or not) of the participant in the social interaction during ToM assessment. Indeed, this framework fails to consider how the participant who takes part in the ToM task manages this information, depending on the fact that he or she is involved in the interaction or not and how the information concerning the agent may impact the participant attribution of mental states. We reviewed several arguments and results from the ToM literature suggesting that merely observing a social interaction is not equivalent to participating in an interaction in terms of cognitive processes involved in the attribution of mental states to others.