نطق سوم

Lecture 3:

Listen to part of a lecture in a psychology class.

So we talked last time about theory of mind.Can someone summarize what that refers to? Janice? It has to do with an ability to,well,isn’t it like realizing that people can have different beliefs, that we don’t all necessarily believe the same things? Right.The term theory of mind refers to a cognitive ability which is the ability to…it’s recognizing that other people have knowledge,ideas,beliefs that may be different from our own.

So,we say that people have a theory of mind because we recognize that other people may have different beliefs than we do.It may sound trivial but newborn infants don’t seem to have it.It seems to develop in children somewhere between the ages of three and five. A consequence of having a theory of mind is that we recognize other people’s motivations and can sometimes predict what they’ll do in certain situations. But the question for us,is whether animals have a theory of mind. Researchers who deal with primates like monkeys tend to accept the likelihood that monkeys have a theory of mind,particularly because they are social animals that live in groups,so they’d certainly benefit from the ability to understand motivations,to predict the behavior of other monkeys. So,for example…

That’s… Excuse me?

Sory,but that’s assuming it makes sense to say that animals have beliefs. Right,of course. Yeah,we are assuming that…We’re inferring beliefs from behavior.They act one way for a reason,not just from instinct,but because they have certain knowledge and have reasoned that a particular course of action would be beneficial, One type of evidence that humans have a theory of mind is behavior like deception because intending to deceive someone requires knowing that they could have different beliefs than you do. Well,researchers who were observing a group of vervet monkeys in west Africa discovered just this type of behavior in vervets. Now,vervets live in social groups.And occasionally a new member will try to join an established group.Well,the researchers noticed that every time a new male would try to join the group,one particular low-ranking male member of the group habitually made a false alarm call that a leopard was approaching the group.When the low-ranking monkey did this,all the group members and the new comer would immediately retreat into the trees to safety.

Obviously,being a low-ranked male,our friend has little interest in seeing a new male member. who will,would almost certainly outrank him join the group.And this tactic did stop that from happening. So the idea is that the monkey knew there was no leopard but believed that the other monkeys would think there was a leopard,realized that the others would have a different belief than he had?

Right.We inferred the monkey had a belief from its behavior.The researchers interpreted the vervet’s behavior to mean that it had an understanding of other vervets’mind and how they react. However,this monkey’s behavior after issuing the false alarm call makes this interpretation somewhat less likely.

After the alarm call,when all of the other monkeys have climbed up into the trees,our friend then came down from his own tree,crossed over to the tree of the intruder,the one who wanted to join the group,and issued the false alarm call again,perhaps to make sure the intruder really got the message. The problem is,if he really did have a theory of mind,he would have realized that climbing down from his tree would show the others that he was aware there was no leopard around.So maybe the alarm call doesn’t show that this particular monkey had a theory of mind.Maybe he simply learned to associate his false alarm call with the action of monkeys retreating into the trees.Maybe he had learned to provoke a reaction without really understanding what motivated the other monkeys’behavior.

So how do we know which interpretation is right?

Good question.That’s often an issue with observational studies.They produce evidence that’s, well,like in this case,people who start out believing that animals have a theory of mind can always pick observations that best support their case.But those who doubt it can always find an alternative interpretation for what was observed.So is there some other methodology,lab experimentation for example,that’s more objective? That would produce more objective evidence about this?

study and understand.