Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T21:32:16.752Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How is mindreading really like reading?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2019

Ian A. Apperly Open the ORCID record for Ian A. Apperly [Opens in a new window]
Ian A. Apperly*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom.i.a.apperly@bham.ac.ukhttp://www.ianapperly.eclipse.co.uk/index.htm
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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. Identification of relevant inferences is a deeply challenging problem, and the most important contribution of cultural learning to mindreading may be an apprenticeship in thinking like a mindreader.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 42 , 2019 , e170
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Apperly, I. A. (2010) Mindreaders: The cognitive basis of “theory of mind.” Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis Group.Google Scholar
Apperly, I. A. (2012) What is “theory of mind”? Concepts, cognitive processes and individual differences. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 65(5):825–839.Google Scholar
Davidson, D. (1990) The structure and content of truth. Journal of Philosophy 87(6):279–328.Google Scholar
Davies, M. & Stone, T., eds. (1995) Folk psychology: The theory of mind debate. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. (2000) The mind doesn't work that way: The scope and limits of computational psychology. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Heyes, C. (2018) Cognitive gadgets: The cultural evolution of thinking. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H., Schulz, L. E. & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2016) The naïve utility calculus: Computational principles underlying commonsense psychology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 20(8)589–604.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1970) How to define theoretical terms. Journal of Philosophy 67(13):427–46.Google Scholar
McKoon, G. & Ratcliff, R. (1998) Memory-based language processing: Psycholinguistic research in the 1990s. Annual Review of Psychology 49:25–42.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. A. (1996) Language in cognitive development: The emergence of the mediated mind. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sanford, A. J. & Garrod, S. C. (1998) The role of scenario mapping in text comprehension. Discourse Processes 26(2-3):159–90.Google Scholar
Stuhlmüller, A. & Goodman, N. D. (2014) Reasoning about reasoning by nested conditioning: Modeling theory of mind with probabilistic programs. Cognitive Systems Research 28:80–99.Google Scholar
Zwaan, R. A. & Radvansky, G. A. (1998) Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 162–185.Google Scholar