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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...

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Autores principales: Meijering, Ben, van Rijn, Hedderik, Taatgen, Niels A., Verbrugge, Rineke
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
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.
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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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