Reading wild minds: A computational assay of Theory of Mind sophistication across seven primate species.

ABSTRACT: Theory of Mind (ToM), i.e. the ability to understand others' mental states, endows humans with highly adaptive social skills such as teaching or deceiving. Candidate evolutionary explanations have been proposed for the unique sophistication of human ToM among primates. For example, the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis states that the increasing complexity of social networks may have induced a demand for sophisticated ToM. This type of scenario ignores neurocognitive constraints that may eventually be crucial limiting factors for ToM evolution. In contradistinction, the cognitive scaffolding hypothesis asserts that a species' opportunity to develop sophisticated ToM is mostly determined by its general cognitive capacity (on which ToM is scaffolded). However, the actual relationships be

SUBMITTER: Devaine M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5693450 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature