Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Higher-order mentalising and executive functioning
AU - Launay, Jacques
AU - Pearce, Eiluned
AU - Wlodarski, Rafael
AU - van Duijn, Max
AU - Carney, James
AU - Dunbar, Robin I M
PY - 2015/11
Y1 - 2015/11
N2 - Higher-order mentalising is the ability to represent the beliefs and desires of other people at multiple, iterated levels — a capacity that sets humans apart from other species. However, there has not yet been a systematic attempt to determine what cognitive processes underlie this ability. Herewe present three correlational studies assessing the extent to which performance on higher-order mentalising tasks relates to emotion recognition, self-reported empathy and self-inhibition. In Study 1a and 1b, examining emotion recognition and empathy, a relationship was identified between individual differences in the ability tomentalise and anemotion recognition task (the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task), but no correlation was found with the empathy quotient, a self- report scale of empathy. Study 2 investigated whether a relationship exists between individual mentalising abilities and four different forms of self-inhibition: motor inhibition, executive inhibition, automatic imitation and temporal discounting. Results demonstrate that only temporal discounting performance relates to mentalising ability; suggesting that cognitive skills relevant to representation of theminds of others' are not influenced by the ability to perform more basic inhibition. Higher-order mentalising appears to rely on the cognitive architecture that serves both low-level social cognition (emotion recognition), and complex forms of inhibition
AB - Higher-order mentalising is the ability to represent the beliefs and desires of other people at multiple, iterated levels — a capacity that sets humans apart from other species. However, there has not yet been a systematic attempt to determine what cognitive processes underlie this ability. Herewe present three correlational studies assessing the extent to which performance on higher-order mentalising tasks relates to emotion recognition, self-reported empathy and self-inhibition. In Study 1a and 1b, examining emotion recognition and empathy, a relationship was identified between individual differences in the ability tomentalise and anemotion recognition task (the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task), but no correlation was found with the empathy quotient, a self- report scale of empathy. Study 2 investigated whether a relationship exists between individual mentalising abilities and four different forms of self-inhibition: motor inhibition, executive inhibition, automatic imitation and temporal discounting. Results demonstrate that only temporal discounting performance relates to mentalising ability; suggesting that cognitive skills relevant to representation of theminds of others' are not influenced by the ability to perform more basic inhibition. Higher-order mentalising appears to rely on the cognitive architecture that serves both low-level social cognition (emotion recognition), and complex forms of inhibition
KW - Empathy
KW - Executive functioning
KW - Inhibition
KW - Mentalising
KW - Social cognition
KW - Social networks
U2 - 10.1016/j.paid.2015.05.021
DO - 10.1016/j.paid.2015.05.021
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 26543298
VL - 86
SP - 6
EP - 14
JO - Personality and Individual Differences
JF - Personality and Individual Differences
SN - 0191-8869
ER -