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25Varieties of off-line simulationIn Peter Carruthers & Peter K. Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind, Cambridge University Press. pp. 39-74. 1996.In the last few years, off-line simulation has become an increasingly important alternative to standard explanations in cognitive science. The contemporary debate began with Gordon (1986) and Goldman's (1989) off-line simulation account of our capacity to predict behavior. On their view, in predicting people's behavior we take our own decision making system `off line' and supply it with the `pretend' beliefs and desires of the person whose behavior we are trying to predict; we then let the decis…Read more
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19Indexing and the object concept:” what” and” where” in infancyTrends in Cognitive Sciences 2 (1): 10-18. 1998.
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54A developmental shift in processes underlying successful belief‐desire reasoningCognitive Science 28 (6): 963-977. 2004.Young children’s failures in reasoning about beliefs and desires, and especially about false beliefs, have been much studied. However, there are few accounts of successful belief-desire reasoning in older children or adults. An exception to this is a model in which belief attribution is treated as a process wherein an inhibitory system selects the most likely content for the belief to be attributed from amongst several competing contents [Leslie, A. M., & Polizzi, P. (1998). Developmental Scienc…Read more
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15The interplay between moral actions and moral judgments in children and adultsConsciousness and Cognition 63 (C): 183-197. 2018.
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44The conceptual underpinnings of pretense: Pretending is not 'behaving-as-if.'Cognition 105 (1): 103-124. 2007.The ability to engage in and recognize pretend play begins around 18 months. A major challenge for theories of pretense is explaining how children are able to engage in pretense, and how they are able to recognize pretense in others. According to one major account, the metarepresentational theory, young children possess both production and recognition abilities because they possess the mental state concept, PRETEND. According to a more recent rival account, the Behavioral theory, young children …Read more
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45The Mental Representation of Human ActionCognitive Science 42 (4): 1229-1264. 2018.Various theories of moral cognition posit that moral intuitions can be understood as the output of a computational process performed over structured mental representations of human action. We propose that action plan diagrams—“act trees”—can be a useful tool for theorists to succinctly and clearly present their hypotheses about the information contained in these representations. We then develop a methodology for using a series of linguistic probes to test the theories embodied in the act trees. …Read more
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1Knowledge and ability in "theory of mind": A one-eyed overview of a debateIn Paul L. Harris (ed.), Mental Simulation, Blackwell. pp. 123--151. 1995.
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26A memory span of one? Object identification in 6.5-month-old infantsCognition 97 (2): 153-177. 2005.
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80Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind."Psychological Review 94 (4): 412-426. 1987.
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52Even a theory-theory needs information processing: ToMM, an alternative theory-theory of the child's theory of mindBehavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1): 56-57. 1993.
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Multiple object tracking in infants: Four (or so) ways of being discreteIn Bruce M. Hood & Laurie Santos (eds.), The origins of object knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 85--106. 2009.
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59Transgressors, victims, and cry babies: Is basic moral judgment spared in autism?Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophyof (from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) forthcoming in Social Neuroscience. [nearly final draft in .pdf] An empirical investigation of moral judgment in autism.
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990Acting intentionally and the side-effect effect: 'Theory of mind' and moral judgmentPsychological Science 17 421-427. 2006.The concept of acting intentionally is an important nexus where ‘theory of mind’ and moral judgment meet. Preschool children’s judgments of intentional action show a valence-driven asymmetry. Children say that a foreseen but disavowed side-effect is brought about 'on purpose' when the side-effect itself is morally bad but not when it is morally good. This is the first demonstration in preschoolers that moral judgment influences judgments of ‘on-purpose’ (as opposed to purpose influencing moral j…Read more
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33Is Implicit Theory of Mind the ‘Real Deal’? The Own‐Belief/True‐Belief Default in Adults and Young PreschoolersMind and Language 31 (2): 147-176. 2016.Recent studies reveal spontaneous implicit false-belief understanding in infancy. But is this early ability genuine theory-of-mind? Spontaneous tasks may allow early success by eliminating the selection-response bias thought to underlie later failure on standard tasks. However, using anticipatory eye gaze, we find the same bias in non-verbal tasks in both preschoolers and adults. We argue that the bias arises from theory-of-mind competence itself and takes the form of a rational prior to attribu…Read more
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24Prospects for a cognitive neuropsychology of autism: Hobson's choicePsychological Review 97 (1): 122-131. 1990.
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14How to acquire a 'representational theory of mind'In Dan Sperber (ed.), Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 197--223. 2000.
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Attending to and learning about mental statesIn Peter Mitchell & Kevin John Riggs (eds.), Children's Reasoning and the Mind, Psychology Press/taylor & Francis. pp. 229--252. 2000.
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42Choice effects and the ineffectiveness of simulationMind and Language 10 (4): 437-45. 1995.Kühberger et al. show that producing the Langer effect is considerably more difficult than has been assumed. Although their results clearly demonstrate a need for further exploration of the Langer effect, none of their arguments undermines the evidence against simulation theory that we presented in Nichols et al. (1996). In our study the actor subjects did show an effect, but the prediction subjects did not predict it, despite the fact that they were provided with all the details of the actor's …Read more
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574Modularity, development and "theory of mind"Mind and Language 14 (1): 131-153. 1999.Psychologists and philosophers have recently been exploring whether the mechanisms which underlie the acquisition of ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) are best charac- terized as cognitive modules or as developing theories. In this paper, we attempt to clarify what a modular account of ToM entails, and why it is an attractive type of explanation. Intuitions and arguments in this debate often turn on the role of develop- ment: traditional research on ToM focuses on various developmental sequences, whereas c…Read more
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319Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”?Cognition 21 (1): 37-46. 1985.We use a new model of metarepresentational development to predict a cognitive deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism. One of the manifestations of a basic metarepresentational capacity is a ‘ theory of mind ’. We have reason to believe that autistic children lack such a ‘ theory ’. If this were so, then they would be unable to impute beliefs to others and to predict their behaviour. This hypothesis was tested using Wimmer and Perner’s puppet …Read more
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31The Role of Victims' Emotions in Preschoolers' Moral JudgmentsReview of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (3): 439-455. 2012.Do victims’ emotions underlie preschoolers’ moral judgment abilities? Study 1 asked preschoolers (n = 72) to judge actions directed at characters who could and could not feel hurt and who did and did not cry. These judgments took into account only the nature of the action, not the nature of the victim. To further investigate how victims’ emotions might impact children’s moral judgments, Study 2 presented preschoolers (n = 37) with stories that varied in transgression type (Moral, Conventional, o…Read more
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165The generative basis of natural number conceptsTrends in Cognitive Sciences 12 (6): 213-218. 2008.Number concepts must support arithmetic inference. Using this principle, it can be argued that the integer concept of exactly ONE is a necessary part of the psychological foundations of number, as is the notion of the exact equality - that is, perfect substitutability. The inability to support reasoning involving exact equality is a shortcoming in current theories about the development of numerical reasoning. A simple innate basis for the natural number concepts can be proposed that embodies the…Read more
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112Indexing and the object concept: developing `what' and `where' systemsTrends in Cognitive Sciences 2 (1): 10-18. 1998.
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Rutgers - New BrunswickRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Mind |