Electrophysiological Correlates of Basic and Higher Order Cognitive and Affective Theory of Mind Processing in Emerging and Early Adulthood-An Explorative Event-Related Potentials Study to Investigate First-, Second-, and Third-Order Theory of Mind Processing Based on Visual Cues.

Attributing mental states to others in social interactions [Theory of Mind (ToM)] often depends on visual social cues like eye gaze or mimic. This study presents an event-related potentials task () that was developed in order to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of first-, second-, and third-order cognitive and affective ToM processing. The task was based on social visual cues and involved electroencephalographic event-related potential (ERP) analyses and exact low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography analyses (eLORETA) source localization analyses.