{"id":218868,"date":"2024-10-10T00:00:59","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T04:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/?p=218868"},"modified":"2024-10-14T12:58:02","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T16:58:02","slug":"the-case-for-redefining-theory-of-mind-qa-with-francois-quesque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/spectrum\/the-case-for-redefining-theory-of-mind-qa-with-francois-quesque\/","title":{"rendered":"The case for redefining \u2018theory of mind\u2019: Q&A with Fran\u00e7ois Quesque"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a new commentary, Quesque and 44 experts in neuroscience and psychology propose a standardized lexicon for research on the attribution of mental states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":218869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[141,17,38,170,110,218,294,219,147,15,215,207,297,191,62,197,356],"acf":{"primary_tag":197,"doi_url":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.53053\/ELXY8536","custom_js_library":"","hero_type":"feat_image","hero_alt_image":null,"hero_youtube":"","hero_video":null,"hero_layout":"full","hero_caption":"Meaningful mess:<\/b> After six years of effort, and thousands of emails, a collaboration of 45 researchers has discarded several commonly used terms to describe mental states and agreed upon eight key terms and their definitions.","hero_by":"Illustration by","hero_credit":218881,"hero_bg_color":"none","authors":[107589],"other_authors":"","related_title":"Explore more from The Transmitter<\/em>","related_hide":false,"related_filter":"latest","related_tag":null,"related_category":null,"related_custom":{"articles":null},"recommended_title":"Recommended reading","recommended_hide":false,"recommended_filter":"latest","recommended_tag":null,"recommended_category":null,"recommended_custom":{"articles":null},"comps":[{"acf_fc_layout":"copy_comp","copy":"About 12 years ago, Fran\u00e7ois Quesque<\/a> encountered a serious obstacle to his research on how people attribute mental states to others. It wasn\u2019t technological or scientific. Rather, it was a question of word choice.\r\n\r\nHe realized that researchers frequently used the same terms to refer to distinct concepts, and distinct terms to refer to the same ones, blurring the meaning of \u201cmentalizing,\u201d \u201cempathy\u201d and related phrases. \u201cIt took me maybe eight or nine years to have a relatively clear, but probably not clear still, idea of what the literature was saying,\u201d recalls Quesque, assistant professor of psychology at Universit\u00e9 Paris Nanterre. \u201cI thought it was impossible to conduct nice research with such a mess.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor example, \u201ctheory of mind\u201d is often used to describe a multitude of cognitive processes, Quesque and his colleagues demonstrated in a paper<\/a> published in 2020. In response to that work, graduate students around the world contacted Quesque and told him they had struggled to reconcile their results with the literature because, despite identical terminology, their studies weren\u2019t measuring the same concept.\r\n\r\nQuesque has gathered a team of 44 other researchers\u2014hailing from 12 countries\u2014who are leaders in subfields of neuroscience and philosophy and who study mental state attribution. (Among them are Simon Baron-Cohen<\/a> and Uta Frith<\/a>, two of the co-authors of the 1985 paper<\/a> that first showed that children with autism failed a theory of mind test.) Over six years, and thousands of emails, the collaboration discarded several commonly used terms and agreed upon eight key terms and their definitions.\r\n\r\nThe collaboration hopes to make this lexicon widespread by adhering to it in publishing, teaching and reviewing, Quesque says. The new lexicon was published<\/a> in April in Communications Psychology.<\/em>\r\n\r\nThe Transmitter<\/em> spoke with Quesque about the importance of precise language when measuring and writing about cognition, and how a standardized lexicon could change how research is done.\r\n\r\nThis interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.<\/em>\r\n\r\nThe Transmitter<\/em>: The collaboration recommends adopting \u201cmentalizing\u201d\u2014instead of the much-used \u201ctheory of mind\u201d\u2014to refer to the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others. Why the shift?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nFran\u00e7ois Quesque: <\/strong>When the term \u201ctheory of mind\u201d was developed, it referred to the idea that a human or an animal<\/a> can have a naive theory about how the mind works. But then over time, the term shifted to refer to an ability.\r\n\r\nWith a theory, you have it or you don\u2019t have it. But once we designed tasks to assess the performance of, for example, autistic children or adults, then it became difficult to say you have or you don\u2019t have this capacity, because we have many, many scores. But we kept using the word.\r\n\r\nThanks to these new terms, it\u2019s easier to say, for example, that autistic people are less efficient at mentalizing, rather than that they have \u201cno theory of mind.\u201d And I think this is the biggest accomplishment of the project.\r\n\r\n[tt_sidebar_quote author='Fran\u00e7ois Quesque']We should avoid terms from daily life when we are doing science, because we need to define things more specifically.[\/tt_sidebar_quote]\r\n\r\nIt was relatively easy to convince people from this sample of experts to make the change. I mean, we all knew that it was just strange to say \u201ctheory\u201d to refer to an ability. We instead voted for \u201cmentalizing\u201d to refer to the capacity to attribute mental states to other people.\r\n\r\nTT: Here \u201ctheory of mind\u201d is given a new definition. Could you talk about why you decided to keep it, but with a different meaning? <\/strong>\r\n\r\nFQ: <\/strong>We didn\u2019t want to discard the term \u201ctheory of mind,\u201d because it was present everywhere. So we decided to keep the term to refer to a naive theory one can have about how the mind works.\r\n\r\nOur definition is: \u201cthe use of folk psychological knowledge and heuristics (e.g., \u2018mental states are correlated with behaviors\u2019, \u2018mental states differ between agents\u2019) to think about one\u2019s own and other people\u2019s mental states.\u201d\r\n\r\nTT: What other terms posed challenges in your discussion? <\/strong>\r\n\r\nFQ: <\/strong>Another term that is problematic but has so much use that we cannot confidently change it is the term \u201cempathy.\u201d There are more than 40 definitions<\/a> in the current literature. It\u2019s also used in art, philosophy and many other fields.\r\n\r\nWe decided we don\u2019t want to use \u201cempathy\u201d to refer the attribution of mental states. We have one definition of empathy that we agree on: \u201cthe ability to experience others\u2019 affective states, while maintaining the distinction from one\u2019s own affective states.\u201d\r\n\r\nI have no huge hopes that this will be the main definition used in the literature. But we don\u2019t want to see \u201cempathy\u201d used to refer to any kind of mental state attribution, because we have other alternatives that are less ambiguous.\r\n\r\nTT: Could adopting a relatively unknown term such as \u201cmentalizing\u201d lead to better communication about research?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nFQ: <\/strong>The main advantage is that people have to define it in the introduction of their paper and when they talk about their research. If I say to my parents and friends that I\u2019m working on mentalizing, they\u2019re like, \u201cOK, what is that?\u201d If I\u2019m saying that I\u2019m working on empathy, then everyone has an idea of what it is, so nobody will ask me to define it.\r\n\r\nI\u2019ve been reading literature on the topic of empathy in neurodegenerative diseases, and what I\u2019ve noticed when I was reading the first 100 articles was that in half of them, there was no explicit definition of empathy, as if the word was evident for everyone. We should avoid terms from daily life when we are doing science, because we need to define things more specifically.\r\n\r\nTT: For several terms that you looked at, as much as 60 percent of the experts surveyed had not encountered them before. What does that tell you?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nFQ: <\/strong>I mean, if one of the terms is not known by half of the authors, this is already a problem. That means there is this very, very specific literature that is not accessible to the world experts on these topics.\r\n\r\nFor example, \u201ccognitive theory of mind\u201d had not been encountered by a third of our authors, who are world leaders. It\u2019s impossible to have \u201ccognitive theory of mind,\u201d because it\u2019s a cognitive process by default. Yet in France it\u2019s in most students\u2019 thesis introductions. This is completely crazy.\r\n\r\nTT: How would you like to see autism researchers apply this lexicon?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nFQ: <\/strong>I think it should influence the practice of science at every level. When talking about autism in particular, the huge advantage is that we are no longer saying that someone does or doesn\u2019t have theory of mind, or that they acquire it completely at a given age, but rather that they have a more or less efficient capacity to mentalize.\r\n\r\nThere\u2019s so much inter-individual variability, but the use of \u201ctheory of mind\u201d as a term prevents researchers from investing money or time into looking at inter-individual variability in adults.\r\n\r\nTT: Do you think others will adopt and maintain these new terms and definitions?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nFQ: <\/strong>Many elements give me confidence. First, I have 44 big names that agree with me. Second, these names are representative of the fields that study these phenomena, and we had very high consensus, around 80 percent, all the time. Third, I think this lexicon will constitute very good guidelines for new Ph.D. students, and they will be happy to use it.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s very time-consuming to think about the terms you want to use. As a reviewer, I\u2019m always asking authors to change their terms or justify them. I don\u2019t care whether they use ours, but researchers should at least define and legitimate the terms they use.\r\n\r\nOf course, I cannot review 1,000 papers per year, so everyone has to participate. Maybe in 2, 3 or 10 years, we will have made a significant step. But this is not something a single person can carry on. We have to act as a community."},{"acf_fc_layout":"callout_comp","callout_title":"","callout_copy":"Have you encountered challenges related to the imprecise use of language for describing the attribution of mental states to others? Leave a comment below.","callout_color":"red"},{"acf_fc_layout":"newsletter","title":"","subtitle":"Sign up for the weekly Spectrum<\/em> newsletter to stay current with the latest advancements in autism research.","bg_image":200913,"groups":[{"group":"2","name":"","hide_checkbox":true}],"linktext":"","linkurl":""}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218868"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219020,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218868\/revisions\/219020"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor\/107589"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor\/218881"}],"acf:term":[{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"post_tag","href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}