The director task: A test of Theory-of-Mind use or selective attention?
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13423_2016_1190_ReferencePDF.pdf
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Author(s)
Rubio-Fernandez, Paula
Date Issued
November 2016
Journal
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Publisher
Psychonomic Society
Citation
Rubio-Fernández, Paula. “The Director Task: A Test of Theory-of-Mind Use or Selective Attention?” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 24, 4 (November 7, 2016): 1121–1128 © 2016 Psychonomic Society, Inc
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Over two decades, the director task has increasingly been employed as a test of the use of Theory of Mind in communication, first in psycholinguistics and more recently in social cognition research. A new version of this task was designed to test two independent hypotheses. First, optimal performance in the director task, as established by the standard metrics of interference, is possible by using selective attention alone, and not necessarily Theory of Mind. Second, pragmatic measures of Theory-of-Mind use can reveal that people actively represent the director’s mental states, contrary to recent claims that they only use domain-general cognitive processes to perform this task. The results of this study support both hypotheses and provide a new interactive paradigm to reliably test Theory-of-Mind use in referential communication.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1190-7
