Lecture. The relationship between metacognition and the

Transcription

1 Introspection ti and metacognition : Mechanisms of self-knowledge Stanislas Dehaene Chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology Lecture The relationship between metacognition and the theory of the mind Course translated from the French version by CG Traduction et Interprétation

2 The relationship between metacognition and «the theory of the mind» Metacognition is how we conceptualize our own mind at work on the representation of information For instance: a red car drove by this morning Consciousness: I saw a red car Memory: I remember that (I saw a red car) Metamemory: I know that (I remember that (I saw a red car)) A more interesting example studied last week : Through experimental psychology, we discover the non-conscious mechanisms of error detection. Conclusion: my brain detects my errors unconsciously. I don t know that (I know that (I committed an error) Such meta-representations must have a very similar encoding format, whether they have a bearing on our mind or on someone else s : I know you do not know something versus I know that I do not know something In both cases, it is necessary to specify the agent (me or someone else), the mental attitude (believe, know ), and the proposition under examination. This might suggest that we apply the same mental representation format and use the same regions of the brain to represent our own mind and that of others.

3 Arguments in favor of a close relationship between metacognition and the theory of the mind Self-knowledge and knowledge of others appear simultaneously in childhood These two forms of fknowledge are not tindependent, d but tdo interact: interference during a trial (Kovacs et al., Science 2010) generalization during learning (Melztoff et Brooks, Developmental Psychology 2008) They appeal to a similar network of brain regions It can be suggested, in particular, that there is a shared cerebral representation for our own errors and those of others.

4 The capacity to visualize others as : thinking beings The «theory of the mind» endowed with intentions and beliefs whose thoughts can be different from (1) reality (2) my own beliefs. The concept of attitude or intentional stance, introduced by Franz Brentano and later by Daniel Dennett Groundbreaking work by Fritz Heider on social perception and the attribution theory The phrase theory of the mind was introduced by David Premack Premack, D., and Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4, Essential methodology: false-belief task or Sally-Anne test Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition, 13(1), See: Wellman, H. M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory-of- mind development: the truth about false belief. Child Dev, 72(3),

5 To successfully pass the test, children must dissociate their beliefs from those of the other protagonists Children age 4 succeed, but not age 3 These findings were replicated by Uta Frith who, with Alan Leslie and Simon Baron-Cohen, introduced the assumption that autism is related to a selective deficit of the theory of the mind. Leslie, A.M. & Frith, U. (1988). Autistic children's understanding of seeing, knowing and believing. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 6: Baron-Cohen S, Leslie AM, Frith U (1985). Does the autistic child have a 'theory of mind? Cognition 21 (1): C D Frith, U Frith Science 1999;286:

6 Is there a relationship with metacognition? At the same age, children begin to: understand the distinction between appearance and reality show a metacognitive representation of their own skills understand other people s minds Example: the Smarties test See for instance Gopnik, A., & Astington, J. W. (1988). Children's understanding di of representational change and its relation to the understanding of false belief and the appearance-reality distinction. Child Dev, 59(1), The child is shown a Smarties box. He believes it is full of Smarties. He is shown instead that it contains a pencil. Question: what is in the box? Answer: a pencil What did you think was in the box? Answer: a pencil In another test, what seems to be a rock proves to be a sponge. Three-year-old children say they always knew that it was a sponge. They are asked other questions regarding what someone else would think, what the object looks like and what it is in reality. These three tests are correlated The meta-representation of one sown These three tests are correlated. The meta representation of one s own knowledge develops simultaneously with that of others.

7 The early development of the theory of the mind Onishi, K. H., & Baillargeon, R. (2005). Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs? Science, 308(5719), Onishi and Baillargeon developed a novel nonverbal version of the task : - The infant watches a video of the person acquiring a true or false belief. -Then, he watches the person searching for the object in several the boxes. The 15-month-old infant is surprised and watches more intently when the person looks in the wrong place (according to the person s belief (and not according to the infant s knowledge). This implies that the child has implicit knowledge of what the other person knows.

8 The early development of the theory of the mind Onishi, K. H., & Baillargeon, R. (2005). Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs? Science, 308(5719), It could be possible that a 15-month old child is able to form its representation of the thoughts of others. J. Perner & T. Ruffman,in Infants' insight into the mind: How deep? Science, 308, (2005), offer another interpretation). Several research teams have furthered the results and the scope of these investigations : Buttelmann, D., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Eighteen-month-old infants show false belief understanding in an active helping paradigm. Cognition, 112(2), Baillargeon, R., Scott, R. M., & He, Z. (2010). False-belief understanding in infants. Trends Cogn Sci, 14(3), Scott, R. M., & Baillargeon, R. (2009). Which penguin is this? Attributing false beliefs about object identity at 18 months. Child Dev, 80(4), Southgate, V., Chevallier, C., & Csibra, G. (2010). Seventeen-month-olds appeal to false beliefs to interpret others' referential communication. Dev Sci, 13(6), Southgate, V., Senju, A., & Csibra, G. (2007). Action anticipation through attribution of false belief by 2-year-olds. Psychol Sci, 18(7), Surian, L., Caldi, S., & Sperber, D. (2007). Attribution of beliefs by 13-month-old infants. Psychol Sci, 18(7), Kovacs, A. M., Teglas, E., & Endress, A. D. (2010). The Social Sense: Susceptibility to Others Beliefs in Human Infants and Adults. Science, 330,

9 Interference between personal beliefs and beliefs of others in adults and 7-year-olds Kovacs, A. M., Teglas, E., & Endress, A. D. (2010). The Social Sense: Susceptibility to Others Beliefs in Human Infants and Adults. Science, 330, Questions : - Is the representation of the beliefs of others automatic, even if not required for the task at hand? - Is the representation in the same perceptive format as personal knowledge? Adults were asked to : -Watch a film describing a true or false belief on the position of a ball P = Participant i - And then as quickly as possible say A = Agent whether the ball was present or not + = believes when the screen was lowered the ball is there (regardless of the previous film). - = believes the ball is not there

10 Interference between personal beliefs and beliefs of others in adults and 7-year-olds Kovacs, A. M., Teglas, E., & Endress, A. D. (2010). The Social Sense: Susceptibility to Others Beliefs in Human Infants and Adults. Science, 330, Results: - The participants react faster when they know that a ball is hidden or, more crucially, when they know that someone e else e believes e a ball is hidden. P = Participant i A = Agent + = believes the ball is there - = believes the ball is not there

11 Interference between personal beliefs and beliefs of others in adults and 7-year-olds Kovacs, A. M., Teglas, E., & Endress, A. D. (2010). The Social Sense: Susceptibility to Others Beliefs in Human Infants and Adults. Science, 330, Exp 1: The observer returns Exp 2: The observer does not Exp 3: The observer is at the end of the film. return at the end of the film. replaced with a pile of objects -year-olds were then tested, with the metric of surprise (looking time). Even at this early age, children are surprised by the absence of the expected ball or, more crucially, of the ball they believe is expected by the other person. Even at this early age, a shared representation system for oneself and others may already exist.

12 Generalization of self-knowledge to the knowledge of others in 12-month-old infants (Meltzoff & Brooks, Developmental Psychology 2008) What metaknowledge do infants possess on eyesight? 10 and 12-month-olds gaze-follow an adult turning his head towards an object with eyes open, but not with eyes closed (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2002). However, they also gaze-follow a blindfolded person Explanation? Maybe infants use their own experience of closed eyes (whereas they have no personal experience of a blindfold) New experiment: e 12-month-olds ot o were e asked to play with objects while their vision was sometimes obstructed by a blindfold placed in front of them. In the control group, the blindfold had a peep hole, allowing the children to see.

13 Generalization of self-knowledge to the knowledge of others in 12-month-old infants (Meltzoff & Brooks, Developmental Psychology 2008) Results: After training, only the infants with whom the blindfold had been used stopped following the head movements of blindfolded adults. Experiment 2: Conversely, 18-month-olds no longer gazefollow a blindfolded adult. (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2002). Is it possible to modify this behavior as well? By training infants with a transparent blindfold! This restores the infants initial behavior of gaze-following the head movements of blindfolded adults. Conclusion: common representations are shared between self-metaknowledge and the theory of the mind of others.

14 The cerebral regions of the theory of the mind Un A network, comprising the anterior medial cortex, the precuneus, the temporo-parietal p junction (more particularly to the right) and the frontal region of the temporal lobe, enters into play in the theory of the mind and in particular in tasks relating to false beliefs. Perner et Aichorn, TICS 2008

15 Theory of the mind: Representation of the thoughts of others Saxe, R., & Powell, L. J. (2006). It's the thought that counts: specific brain regions for one component of theory of mind. Psychol Sci, 17(8), Rebecca Saxe s work shows that the network can be activated by listening to a story on other people s thoughts, h as opposed to their sensations or physical appearance. Joe was a heavy-set man, with a gut that fell over his belt. He was balding and combed his blonde hair over the top of his head. His face was pleasant, with large brown eyes. versus Nicky knew that his sister s s flight from San Francisco was delayed ten hours. Only one flight was delayed so much that night, so when he got to the airport, he knew that flight was hers.

16 Someone else s thoughts versus my own thoughts Vogeley, K., Bussfeld, P., Newen, A., Herrmann, S., Happe, F., Falkai, P., et al. (2001). Mind reading: neural mechanisms of theory of mind and self-perspective. Neuroimage, 14(1 Pt 1), Experimental design 2x2: Stories on - disjointed facts, - the mental state of others -the mental state of the scanned person - or both Example «You went to London for a weekend trip and you would like to visit some museums and different parks around London. In the morning, when you leave the hotel, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. So you do not expect it to start raining. However, walking around in a big park later, the sky becomes gray and it starts to rain heavily. You forgot your umbrella. Question: What do you think? TOM+, SELF- Condition TOM+, SELF+ Condition TOM-, SELF+ Condition TOM main effect SELF Main effect

17 Thoughts of others versus My own thoughts Ochsner, K. N., Knierim, K., Ludlow, DH D. H., Hanelin, J., Ramachandran, T., Glover, G., et al. (2004). Reflecting upon feelings: an fmri study of neural systems supporting the attribution of emotion to self and other. J Cogn Neurosci, 16(10), Experimental design: Participants were shown photographs and were asked to give three judgments in distinct blocks: -emotions felt by the scanned person? -emotions felt by the person in the picture? -control: indoor or outdoor picture? Results: - existence of a vast common network (medial prefrontal, precuneus, right posterior temporal) - as well as of distinctive regions of the medial prefrontal cortex activated for self rather than for others (and vice-versa in other regions). meta-analysis analysis of many works: Self Other

18 Thoughts of others versus my own thoughts Jenkins, A. C., Macrae, C. N., & Mitchell, J. P. (2008). Repetition i suppression of ventromedial prefrontal activity during judgments of self and others. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 105(11), The «repetition suppression» paradigm: the representation of an identical mental state in oneself and in someone else activates the same neuron population. Thinking about questions ( enjoy crossword puzzles?, like to be the center of attention? ) Two questions were asked at a short interval. The second question was about the self; the previous one can be - identical or not - about oneself, about the other sharing the same opinion («similar») or not («dissimilar»). Result: in a prelocalized region of the mesial prefrontal cortex, selected for its involvement in selfreflection, there is signal reduction both in the case of two consecutive self-reflections (not necessarily in answer to the same question) and din a self-after-similar f il reflection. Suggested conclusion: shared representation of self and other.

19 Autism, theory of the mind and self-representation Functional MRI was run as 23 autistic adults and 23 controls (behavior matched) responded to questions -about themselves or about someone else (the Queen of England!) - and on physical or mental characteristics. Main findings: - two regions which respond preferably to «self» in normal subjects (middle Cingular cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex) do not respond in the autistic subject. - self/other distinction in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex correlates with the severity of early childhood social impairment.

20 Discussion of these imaging g studies of «self» Results converge towards a relatively repeatable network of «self», in particular in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex The interpretation of results remains ambiguous: either we have a detailed representation of ourselves and use this network of «self» to simulate the mind of others and attempt to understand it. or, we have no specific introspection system: Our knowledge is based on the observation of the self as the other». Experimental paradigms are not rigorous better metacognitive protocols, closer to psychophysics must absolutely be developed based on the introspection of real mental states rather than on their imagination through stories or pictures.

21 One single brain representation for my errors and your errors In different runs, participants are asked to either perform Eriksen s task, or to watch the investigator perform the task. Execution: Participants see the central stimulus and peripheral distractions. The investigator observes the run and post-reports the number of errors committed. Observation: Participants only see the central stimulus (which facilitates error detection). Participants focus on the stimulus without moving their eyes, but are asked to pay attention to the responses of others. The evoked potentials are recorded and are used for ERN (error-related negativity) and LRP (lateralized readiness potential) calculation). van Schie, H. T., Mars, R. B., Coles, M. G., & Bekkering, H. (2004). Modulation of activity in medial frontal and motor cortices during error observation. Nat Neurosci, 7(5),

22 One single brain representation for my errors and your errors van Schie, H. T., Mars, R. B., Coles, M. G., & Bekkering, H. (2004). Modulation of activity in medial frontal and motor cortices during error observation. Nat Neurosci, 7(5),

23 One single brain representation for my errors and your errors The LRP, at the observation stage, reveals two steps: 1. First, the correct activation of the motor cortex, preceding the other person s response 2. Second, the activation of the side of the response given by the other This points to mental simulation: - at the active level, simulation of the answer that should be given - then, of the other person s actual answer - and finally, of an error signal. van Schie, H. T., Mars, R. B., Coles, M. G., & Bekkering, H. (2004). Modulation of activity in medial frontal and motor cortices during error observation. Nat Neurosci, 7(5),

24 Being aware of one s own capacity is important for collective behavior Bahrami, B., Olsen, K., Latham, P. E., Roepstorff, A., Rees, G., & Frith, C. D. (2010). Optimally interacting minds. Science, 329(5995), Question: is decision-making improved when several people are asked to agree collectively? -The psychophysical task (deciding which interval contains a target) The psychophysical task (deciding which interval contains a target) - simultaneously performed by two subjects - If there is disagreement, the experiment is interrupted and both participants discuss to come to a joint agreement.

25 Being aware of one s own capacity is important for collective behavior Bahrami, B., Olsen, K., Latham, P. E., Roepstorff, A., Rees, G., & Frith, C. D. (2010). Optimally interacting minds. Science, 329(5995), Joint performance, from the sensitivity standpoint (d-prime), exceeds that of individuals, their average performance or even of the best of the two. Less sensitive observer Joint performance More sensitive i observer Best fit to Gaussian cumulative function It can only be explained by the assumption that participants exchange their confidence level on the basis of what they saw during a given trial (weighted confidence sharing model). Further experiments show that (1) improvement only exists if both participants have similar sensitivities (2) communication is a requirement, not feedback. According to Chris Frith, metacognitive abilities and awareness may have been developed to facilitate communication between individuals and social and collective decision-making.

26 Conclusions At the highest levels of conscious metacognition, there exists a close relationship between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others: they develop simultaneously in children they are not independent, but interact with each other (so that I in part confuse what I know with what you know) they activate brain networks that are partly common These observations also apply to error representation, which is a more automatic phenomenon we take the «intentional stance» with ease and treat others as ourselves. Introspection, whether fictitious or not, may well play an essential role in the social dialog specific to the human species.