Defining key concepts for mental state attribution.

The terminology used in discussions on mental state attribution is extensive and lacks consistency. In the current paper, experts from various disciplines collaborate to introduce a shared set of concepts and make recommendations regarding future use.

Mindreading quality versus quantity: A theoretically and empirically motivated two-factor structure for individual differences in adults' mindreading.

Existing methods for studying individual differences in adults' mindreading often lack good psychometric characteristics. Moreover, it remains unclear, even in theory, how mindreading varies in adults who already possess an understanding of mental states. In this pre-registered study, it was hypothesised that adults vary in their motivation for mindreading and in the degree to which their answers on mindreading tasks are appropriate (context-sensitive).

A transdiagnostic approach to neurodiversity in a representative population sample: The N+ 4 model.

Background: The concept of neurodiversity draws upon scientific research, and lessons from practice and lived experience to suggest new ways of thinking about neurodevelopmental conditions. Among the formative observations are that characteristics associated with neurodevelopmental conditions are part of a "broader phenotype" of variation across the whole population, and that there appear to be "transdiagnostic" similarities as well as differences in these characteristics. These observations raise important questions that have implications for understanding diversity in neurodevelopmental conditions and in neurocognitive phenotypes across the whole population.

Remembering visual and linguistic common ground in shared history.

Successful communication requires speakers and listeners to refer to information in their common ground. Shared history is one of the bases for common ground, as information from a communicative episode in the past can be referred to in future communication. However, to draw upon shared history, communicative partners need to have an accurate memory record that they can refer to.

Human-centred explanations for artificial intelligence systems.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems increase in capability, so there are growing concerns over the ways in which the recommendations they provide can affect people's everyday life and decisions. The field of Explainable AI (XAI) aims to address such concerns but there is often a neglect of the human in this process. We present a formal definition of human-centred XAI and illustrate the application of this formalism to the design of a user interface.

Three key questions to move towards a theoretical framework of visuospatial perspective taking.

What would a theory of visuospatial perspective taking (VSPT) look like? Here, ten researchers in the field, many with different theoretical viewpoints and empirical approaches, present their consensus on the three big questions we need to answer in order to bring this theory (or these theories) closer.

Measures of individual differences in adult theory of mind: A systematic review.

Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to understand and reason about mental states, has been extensively studied in young children and clinical populations. A growing interest in examining ToM in adults has emerged over the past two decades, but the extent to which existing measures are suitable for studying adults, especially in detecting individual differences, remains understudied. In this systematic review of 273 studies, 75 measures used to investigate individual differences in adults' ToM were identified.

It is not all about you: Communicative cooperation is determined by your partner's theory of mind abilities as well as your own.

We investigated the relationship between Theory of Mind (ToM) and communicative cooperation. Specifically, we examined whether communicative cooperation is affected by the ToM ability of one's cooperative partner as well as their own. ToM is the attribution of mental states to oneself and others; cooperation is the joint action that leads to achieving a shared goal.

Is recursive "mindreading" really an exception to limitations on recursive thinking?

The ability to mindread recursively-for example, by thinking what person 1 thinks person 2 thinks person 3 thinks-is a prime example of recursive thinking in which one process, representation, or idea becomes embedded within a similar one. It has also been suggested that mindreading is an exceptional example, with five recursive steps commonly observed for mindreading, in comparison with just one or two in other domains. However, conceptual analysis of existing recursive mindreading tasks suggests that conclusions about exceptional mindreading are insecure.

Reading fiction and reading minds in early adolescence: A longitudinal study.

Reading fiction is argued to have benefits for our understanding of others' thoughts, feelings and desires, referred to as 'theory of mind'(ToM). We aimed to test this assumption by examining whether children's reading experience is longitudinally associated with later ToM. We examined reading experience and ToM in 236 children between the ages of 11-13 years.

Psychosocial functioning in the balance between autism and psychosis: evidence from three populations.

Functional impairment is a core feature of both autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorders. While diagnostically independent, they can co-occur in the same individual at both the trait and diagnostic levels. The effect of such co-occurrence is hypothesized to worsen functional impairment.

Young children spontaneously invent three different types of associative tool use behaviour.

Associative Tool Use (ATU) describes the use of two or more tools in combination, with the literature further differentiating between Tool set use, Tool composite use, Sequential tool use and Secondary tool use. Research investigating the cognitive processes underlying ATU has shown that some primate and bird species spontaneously invent Tool set and Sequential tool use. Yet studies with humans are sparse.

Sources of Cognitive Conflict and Their Relevance to Theory-of-Mind Proficiency in Healthy Aging: A Preregistered Study.

Age-related decline in theory of mind (ToM) may be due to waning executive control, which is necessary for resolving conflict when reasoning about other individuals' mental states. We assessed how older ( = 50) and younger ( = 50) adults were affected by three theoretically relevant sources of conflict within ToM: competing self-other perspectives, competing cued locations, and outcome knowledge. We examined which best accounted for age-related difficulty with ToM.

The development of early social cognitive skills in neurogenetic syndromes associated with autism: Cornelia de Lange, fragile X and Rubinstein-Taybi syndromes.

Background: Cornelia de Lange (CdLS), Fragile X (FXS) and Rubinstein-Taybi syndromes (RTS) evidence unique profiles of autistic characteristics. To delineate these profiles further, the development of early social cognitive abilities in children with CdLS, FXS and RTS was compared to that observed in typically developing (TD) and autistic (AUT) children.

Methods: Children with CdLS (N = 22), FXS (N = 19) and RTS (N = 18), completed the Early Social Cognition Scale (ESCogS).

Correction: Why are listeners sometimes (but not always) egocentric? Making inferences about using others' perspective in referential communication.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Willing and able? Theory of mind, social motivation, and social competence in middle childhood and early adolescence.

This study investigated the links between theory of mind, social motivation, and children's social competence in middle childhood and early adolescence. Two hundred and sixty four children (136 girls, 128 boys) aged between 8 and 13 years (M Age = 10.88 years, SD = 1.

EEG and fMRI evidence for autobiographical memory reactivation in empathy.

Empathy relies on the ability to mirror and to explicitly infer others' inner states. Theoretical accounts suggest that memories play a role in empathy, but direct evidence of reactivation of autobiographical memories (AM) in empathy is yet to be shown. We addressed this question in two experiments.

Why are listeners sometimes (but not always) egocentric? Making inferences about using others' perspective in referential communication.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to understand others' mental states, and that these mental states can differ from our own. Although healthy adults have little trouble passing conceptual tests of ToM (e.g.

Re-imaging the intentional stance.

The commonly used paradigm to investigate Dennet's 'intentional stance' compares neural activation when participants compete with a human versus a computer. This paradigm confounds whether the opponent is natural or artificial and whether it is intentional or an automaton. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study is, to our knowledge, the first to investigate the intentional stance by orthogonally varying perceptions of the opponents' intentionality (responding actively or passively according to a script) and embodiment (human or a computer).

An Observational Study of Social Interaction Skills and Behaviors in Cornelia de Lange, Fragile X and Rubinstein-Taybi Syndromes.

We directly assessed the broader aspects of sociability (social enjoyment, social motivation, social interaction skills and social discomfort) in individuals with Cornelia de Lange (CdLS), fragile X (FXS) and Rubinstein-Taybi syndromes (RTS), and their association with autism characteristics and chronological age in these groups. Individuals with FXS (p < 0.01) and RTS (p < 0.

Scaling of Early Social Cognitive Skills in Typically Developing Infants and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

We delineate the sequence that typically developing infants pass tasks that assess different early social cognitive skills considered precursors to theory-of-mind abilities. We compared this normative sequence to performance on these tasks in a group of autistic (AUT) children. 86 infants were administered seven tasks assessing intention reading and shared intentionality (Study 1).

Perspective-taking across cultures: shared biases in Taiwanese and British adults.

The influential hypothesis by Markus & Kitayama (Markus, Kitayama 1991. , 224) postulates that individuals from interdependent cultures place others above self in interpersonal contexts. This led to the prediction and finding that individuals from interdependent cultures are less egocentric than those from independent cultures (Wu, Barr, Gann, Keysar 2013.

How is mindreading really like reading?

I suggest an alternative basis for Heyes' analogy between cultural learning of mindreading and text reading. Unlike text reading, mindreading does not entail decoding of observable stimuli. Like text reading, mindreading requires relevant inferences.

The Benefit of Seeing in Company.

A new study by Ward and colleagues (Curr. Biol. 2019;29:874-880) finds that participants use mental rotation to calculate an avatar's perspective on a scene without any prompt to do so.