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What Eye Movements Can Tell about Theory of Mind in a Strategic Game
This study investigates strategies in reasoning about mental states of others, a process that requires theory of mind. It is a first step in studying the cognitive basis of such reasoning, as strategies affect tradeoffs between cognitive resources. Participants were presented with a two-player game...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2012
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3461025/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23029341 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045961 |
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author | Meijering, Ben van Rijn, Hedderik Taatgen, Niels A. Verbrugge, Rineke |
author_facet | Meijering, Ben van Rijn, Hedderik Taatgen, Niels A. Verbrugge, Rineke |
author_sort | Meijering, Ben |
collection | PubMed |
description | This study investigates strategies in reasoning about mental states of others, a process that requires theory of mind. It is a first step in studying the cognitive basis of such reasoning, as strategies affect tradeoffs between cognitive resources. Participants were presented with a two-player game that required reasoning about the mental states of the opponent. Game theory literature discerns two candidate strategies that participants could use in this game: either forward reasoning or backward reasoning. Forward reasoning proceeds from the first decision point to the last, whereas backward reasoning proceeds in the opposite direction. Backward reasoning is the only optimal strategy, because the optimal outcome is known at each decision point. Nevertheless, we argue that participants prefer forward reasoning because it is similar to causal reasoning. Causal reasoning, in turn, is prevalent in human reasoning. Eye movements were measured to discern between forward and backward progressions of fixations. The observed fixation sequences corresponded best with forward reasoning. Early in games, the probability of observing a forward progression of fixations is higher than the probability of observing a backward progression. Later in games, the probabilities of forward and backward progressions are similar, which seems to imply that participants were either applying backward reasoning or jumping back to previous decision points while applying forward reasoning. Thus, the game-theoretical favorite strategy, backward reasoning, does seem to exist in human reasoning. However, participants preferred the more familiar, practiced, and prevalent strategy: forward reasoning. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3461025 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-34610252012-10-01 What Eye Movements Can Tell about Theory of Mind in a Strategic Game Meijering, Ben van Rijn, Hedderik Taatgen, Niels A. Verbrugge, Rineke PLoS One Research Article This study investigates strategies in reasoning about mental states of others, a process that requires theory of mind. It is a first step in studying the cognitive basis of such reasoning, as strategies affect tradeoffs between cognitive resources. Participants were presented with a two-player game that required reasoning about the mental states of the opponent. Game theory literature discerns two candidate strategies that participants could use in this game: either forward reasoning or backward reasoning. Forward reasoning proceeds from the first decision point to the last, whereas backward reasoning proceeds in the opposite direction. Backward reasoning is the only optimal strategy, because the optimal outcome is known at each decision point. Nevertheless, we argue that participants prefer forward reasoning because it is similar to causal reasoning. Causal reasoning, in turn, is prevalent in human reasoning. Eye movements were measured to discern between forward and backward progressions of fixations. The observed fixation sequences corresponded best with forward reasoning. Early in games, the probability of observing a forward progression of fixations is higher than the probability of observing a backward progression. Later in games, the probabilities of forward and backward progressions are similar, which seems to imply that participants were either applying backward reasoning or jumping back to previous decision points while applying forward reasoning. Thus, the game-theoretical favorite strategy, backward reasoning, does seem to exist in human reasoning. However, participants preferred the more familiar, practiced, and prevalent strategy: forward reasoning. Public Library of Science 2012-09-28 /pmc/articles/PMC3461025/ /pubmed/23029341 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045961 Text en © 2012 Meijering et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Meijering, Ben van Rijn, Hedderik Taatgen, Niels A. Verbrugge, Rineke What Eye Movements Can Tell about Theory of Mind in a Strategic Game |
title | What Eye Movements Can Tell about Theory of Mind in a Strategic Game |
title_full | What Eye Movements Can Tell about Theory of Mind in a Strategic Game |
title_fullStr | What Eye Movements Can Tell about Theory of Mind in a Strategic Game |
title_full_unstemmed | What Eye Movements Can Tell about Theory of Mind in a Strategic Game |
title_short | What Eye Movements Can Tell about Theory of Mind in a Strategic Game |
title_sort | what eye movements can tell about theory of mind in a strategic game |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3461025/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23029341 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045961 |
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