Evidence obtained with new experimental paradigms has renewed the debate on the development of theory of mind in general and false belief ascription in particular. Namely, several studies contend to prove that infants already have the capacity to attribute false beliefs. The aim of the current meta-analysis is to review and summarize the empirical evidence about spontaneous-response false belief tasks in infants younger than 2 years old. Fifty-six false belief conditions using the violation-of-expectation, the anticipatory looking and interactive paradigms were included in this meta-analysis, including 1469 infants. The role of several moderators was examined, following Wellman et al.ös meta-analysis (2001). Results show that correct performance on spontaneous-response false belief tasks was about 1.76 times more likely than incorrect performance (β = 0.57, 95% CI 0.33; 0.80, p < .0001). Mediator analyses revealed that (i) year of publication had a significant influence on performance, reducing the average log odds of successful performance (β = -0.11, 95% CI: -0.16; -0.06, p < .0001); and (ii) correct performance was more likely than incorrect performance when the task was conducted in the violation-of-expectation paradigm (β = 0.75, 95% CI: 0.25; 1.26, p = .003). However, heterogeneity was high across the studies and the funnel plot revealed an asymmetric distribution suggesting that studies with small effect sizes were not published. These results cast doubt on the alleged robustness of the phenomenon: its effect size decreases as time passes, it seems to depend on the type of paradigm employed, and the variance across studies is not well understood yet.

Motivation to learn might be intrinsic or extrinsic, and both are related to academic performance in undergraduate students. Gamification practices can improve academic performance but studies on its effects on motivation are mixed. In this study, we assess the effects of gamification on motivation in undergraduate students. 120 first-year undergraduate psychology students registered in an introductory class participated in 6 quiz games about the basic scientific foundations of Psychology. We designed a counterbalanced study with two groups and three assessment points. Instruments comprised a demographical questionnaire and the CEAP-48 scale to measure extrinsic and intrinsic motivation to learning. A mixed ANOVA was performed to test the main hypothesis. Group 1 improved their scores in extrinsic motivation after gamification (t = -4.46, p <.001, d = -0.58) and were superior to Group 2 at second assessment point (t = 3.02, p =.034, d = 0.55). Group 2 also increased their scores in extrinsic motivation at third assessment point after gamification (t = -7.68, p <.001, d = -0.66) and were equivalent to Group 1 (t = -0.46, p =.997, d = -0.08). Gamification increases motivation oriented to reward and avoidance of low academic performance, instead of intrinsic motivation in undergraduate students.

In the classical Turing test, participants are challenged to tell whether they are interacting with another human being or with a machine. The way the interaction takes place is not direct, but a distant conversation through computer screen messages. Basic forms of interaction are face-to-face and embodied, context-dependent and based on the detection of reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Our idea is that interaction detection requires the integration of proprioceptive and interoceptive patterns with sensorimotor patterns, within quite short time lapses, so that they appear as mutually contingent, as reciprocal. In other words, the experience of interaction takes place when sensorimotor patterns are contingent upon one’s own movements, and vice versa. I react to your movement, you react to mine. When I notice both components, I come to experience an interaction. Therefore, we designed a “minimal” Turing test to investigate how much information is required to detect these reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Using a new version of the perceptual crossing paradigm, we tested whether participants resorted to interaction detection to tell apart human from machine agents in repeated encounters with these agents. In two studies, we presented participants with movements of a human agent, either online or offline, and movements of a computerized oscillatory agent in three different blocks. In each block, either auditory or audiovisual feedback was provided along each trial. Analysis of participants’ explicit responses and of the implicit information subsumed in the dynamics of their series will reveal evidence that participants use the reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies within short time windows. For a machine to pass this minimal Turing test, it should be able to generate this sort of reciprocal contingencies.

Research in the last 15 years has challenged the idea that false belief attribution develops at 4 years of age. Studies with indirect false belief tasks contend to provide evidence of false belief attribution in the second year of life. We review the literature on indirect false belief tasks carried out in infants using looking and active helping paradigms. Although the results are heterogeneous and not conclusive, such tasks appear to capture a real effect. However, it is misleading to call them “false belief” tasks, as it is possible to pass them without making any false belief attribution. Infants need to keep track of the object's and agent's positions, trajectories, and focus of attention, given an intentional understanding of the agent, to pass these new tasks. We, therefore, argue that the evidence can be better explained in terms of second‐person attributions, which are transparent, extensional, nonpropositional, reciprocally contingent, and implicit. Second‐person attributions can also account for primates' mentalizing abilities, as revealed by similar indirect tasks.This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development Philosophy > Foundations of Cognitive Science Cognitive Biology > Evolutionary Roots of Cognition

This paper aimed to contribute to answering three questions. First, how robust and reliable are early implicit measures of false belief (FB) understanding? Second, do these measures tap FB understanding rather than simpler processes such as tracking the protagonist's perceptual access? Third, do implicit FB tasks tap an earlier, more basic form of theory of mind (ToM) than standard verbal tasks? We conducted a conceptual replication of Garnham & Perner's task (Garnham and Perner 2001Br. J. Dev. Psychol.19, 413–432) simultaneously measuring children's anticipatory looking and interactive behaviours toward an agent with a true or FB (N= 81,M= 40 months). Additionally, we implemented an ignorance condition and a standard FB task. We successfully replicated the original findings: children's looking and interactive behaviour differed according to the agent's true or FB. However, children mostly did not differentiate between FB and ignorance conditions in various measures of anticipation and uncertainty, suggesting the use of simpler conceptual strategies than full-blown ToM. Moreover, implicit measures were all related to each other but largely not related to performance in the standard FB task, except for first look in the FB condition. Overall, our findings suggest that these implicit measures are robust but may not tap the same underlying cognitive capacity as explicit FB tasks.