Great apes use self-experience to anticipate an agent's action in a false-belief test.

ABSTRACT: Human social life depends on theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others. A signature of theory of mind, false belief understanding, requires representing others' views of the world, even when they conflict with one's own. After decades of research, it remains controversial whether any nonhuman species possess a theory of mind. One challenge to positive evidence of animal theory of mind, the behavior-rule account, holds that animals solve such tasks by responding to others' behavioral cues rather than their mental states. We distinguish these hypotheses by implementing a version of the "goggles" test, which asks whether, in the absence of any additional behavioral cues, animals can use their own self-experience of a novel barrier being translucent or opaque

SUBMITTER: Kano F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6800361 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature