The Facilitative Effect of Context on Second-Order Social Reasoning

The Facilitative Effect of Context on Second-Order Social Reasoning Ben Meijering 1 (b.meijering@rug.nl), Leendert van Maanen 1 , Hedderik van Rijn 2 , & Rineke Verbrugge 1 Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen Department of Psychology, University of Groningen Abstract This paper is about higher-order social reasoning such as “I think that you think that I think …”. Previous research has shown that such reasoning seriously deteriorates in complex social interactions. It has been suggested that reasoning can be facilitated greatly if an abstract logical problem is embedded in a context. This has not yet been tested for higher-order social reasoning. We presented participants with strategic games that demand higher-order social reasoning. The games were embedded in the context of a marble game. Participants performed really well, that is, almost at ceiling. We argue that context has a facilitative effect on higher order- social reasoning. Keywords: Theory of Mind; Social Cognition; Higher-order Social Reasoning; Strategic Game. Social Reasoning In many social situations we need to reason about one another. We do so to plan our actions and predict how our behavior might affect others. The ability to reason about another’s knowledge, beliefs, desires and intentions is often referred to as Theory of Mind (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). It has been extensively investigated in children and seems to develop around the age of 4 years (Wimmer & Perner, 1983; but see Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005). Nevertheless, reasoning about others is very demanding, even for adults, which becomes apparent in more complex interactions. So far, empirical results have shown social reasoning to be far from optimal (Flobbe, Verbrugge, Hendriks, & Kramer, 2008; Hedden & Zhang, 2002). It has been suggested that (social) reasoning might be facilitated if it is embedded in a context (Wason & Shapiro, 1971). In the current study, we investigate whether social reasoning really is difficult and whether embedding it in a context can facilitate it. When we ascribe a simple mental state to someone, we are applying first-order social reasoning. For example, imagine a social interaction between Ann, Bob and Carol. If Bob thinks “Ann knows that my birthday is tomorrow”, he is applying first-order reasoning, which covers a great deal of social interaction. However, first-order reasoning is not sufficient to cover more complex social situations. The interaction between Ann, Bob and Carol can easily demand reasoning of one order higher: If Carol thinks “Bob knows that Ann knows that his birthday is tomorrow”, she is making a second-order attribution. Bob’s first-order attribution and Carol’s second-order attribution are hierarchically structured: Bob applied first- order reasoning by attributing a mental state to Ann, and Carol applied second-order reasoning by attributing first- order reasoning to Bob. A third-order attribution involves the reader attributing second-order reasoning to Carol, and so forth. The depth of reasoning in humans is constrained by cognitive resources (Verbrugge, 2009; Flobbe et al., 2008; Hedden & Zhang, 2002). As the order of reasoning increases, the demands on cognitive processing increase as well. Cognitive resources and processing speed seem to increase with age (Fry & Hale, 1996), and that increase could allow for the representation of increasingly more complex mental states. Findings from developmental studies support that idea. Where first-order social reasoning is acquired at the age of around 4 years (Wimmer & Perner, 1983), second-order social reasoning seems to develop some years later, at the age of around 6 to 8 years (Perner & Wimmer, 1985). However, 6- to 8-year-olds do not understand all kinds of mental states, and even adults cannot readily apply second-order reasoning in all kinds of contexts (Flobbe et al., 2008; Hedden & Zhang, 2002). Paradigms to Test Social Reasoning There are a few paradigms to test social cognition. Probably the most familiar paradigm is the False-Belief task (Wimmer & Perner, 1983), which has been adapted to test second-order social cognition (Perner & Wimmer, 1985). In a typical second-order False-Belief story, two characters, John and Mary, are independently informed about the transfer of an object, an ice-cream van, from one location to another. In the story, both John and Mary know where the van is, but John does not know that Mary also knows that the van has moved to a new location. Participants are told the story and asked where John thinks Mary will go for ice cream. To answer this question correctly, participants have to be able to represent the second-order false belief “John thinks that Mary thinks the van is still at the old location. ”. In Perner and Wimmer’s (1985) study, some children of 6 to 7 years of age were able to make such second-order attributions, but only under optimal conditions; when the inference of second-order beliefs was prompted. Apart from some concerns about the False-Belief task’s aptness to test for the presence of a Theory of Mind (Bloom & German, 2000), Perner and Wimmer (1985) expressed concerns about the generality of their findings as participants were presented “rather pedestrian problem[s] of knowing where somebody has gone to look for something” (p. 469). They stressed that investigations into higher-order social reasoning will only achieve theoretical importance if a link with other domains can be established. Various other language comprehension paradigms have been used to test social cognition (e.g., Van Rij, Van Rijn, & Hendriks, to appear; Hollebrandse, Hobbs, De Villiers, & Roeper, 2008; Hendriks & Spenader, 2006). Hollebrandse et al. (2008) presented discourse with multiple, recursive