Do animals have theory of mind?

Theory of mind/mindreading

• Having a theory of mind = attributing to others mental states like believing, thinking, desiring, perceiving, trying, hoping, seeing, feeling, etc.
• Also called "mindreading" or just "attributing mental states"

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1. The first theory of mind experiments

Premack and Woodruff  "Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?" (1978) 

Details

1. One chimp--Sarah--had been on TV--had then spent 10 years in lab undergoing cognitive tests 5 days a week
2. Videos lasted just 30 seconds
3. There are two sets of videos--first set involves bananas, second set involves other problems
4. For each set of 4 videos there are 4 end-of-story pictures
5. Sarah is shown one video and then 2 "end of story" pictures
6. She almost always chose the picture that showed what the actor needed for success

Alternative Hypotheses

1. Just match-to-sample--NO because every video contains all of the end of-story-elements
2. Associative learning--NO, ruled out by her past experience
3. Empathy--NO, ruled out because she's not interested in these human activities
4. Mindreading-- YES, their conclusion
5. Behavior reading -- failed to consider

Commentators proposed false belief experiments as a better alternative.

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2. False belief experiments done on children

Can animals/children differentiate facts in the world from what another person falsely believes to be true?

 

Young child reasons--

1. There are candles in the box
2. Snoopy will say there are candles in the box

Intepretation: the child doesn't grasp that Snoopy has his own point of view, his own set of evidence, and so will have a false belief

Older child reasons--

1. There are candles in the box
2. Snoopy didn't see that there are candles in the box
3. Snoopy will say there are crayons in the box

Interpretation: the child grasps that Snoopy does have his own point of view, his own evidence, and so will have a false belief about what's in the box

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3. Do apes pass false belief tests?

Call and Tomasello--"Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later" (2008)

1. Apes fail false belief test
2. They have other aspects of theory of mind

But here's a more recent experiment

Krupene, Kano, Hirata, Call, and Tomasello, "Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs" (2016)

Test passed by chimpanzees, orangutans, and bonobos

Consider alternative hypotheses 

1. Mindreading--the guy SAW the food hidden under the first box so that's where I expect him to look
2. Behavior reading--the guy was there while the food was hidden under the first box so that's where I expect him to look

Why do apes do better at this task than other false belief tasks?

1. Ape doesn't have to make any explicit behavioral choices
2. This experiment shows "implicit" belief

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4. Do apes understand others as seeing?

Povinelli and Vonk, "Chimpanzee Minds, Suspiciously Human?"

Discussed by Clive Wynne and also Kristin Andrews, ch. 7

Chimps will beg for food from all these people
except for the person with their back turned in #4

What does success (d) show? 

1. Mindreading hypothesis
2. Behavior reading hypothesis

Do (a) - (c) show that apes are bad at both mindreading and behavior reading?

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5. Apes vs. dogs

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