Does implicit mentalising involve the representation of others’ mental state content? Examining domain-specificity with an adapted Joint Simon task: A registered report

Wong, Malcolm Ka Yu and Bazhydai, Marina and Hartley, Calum and Wang, Jessica (2024) Does implicit mentalising involve the representation of others’ mental state content? Examining domain-specificity with an adapted Joint Simon task: A registered report. In: 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Dynamics of Cognition, CogSci 2024, 2024-07-24 - 2024-07-27, Postillion Hotel & Convention Centre WTC.

Text (jstMem_CogSci_2024_poster - A0)
jstMem_CogSci_2024_poster_-_A0.pdf
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (546kB)

Abstract

Implicit mentalising involves the automatic awareness others’ perspectives. The Joint Simon task demonstrates this as a Joint Simon Effect (JSE): A spatial compatibility effect is elicited more strongly in a Joint Simon versus an Individual go/no-go task. The JSE may stem from spontaneous action co-representation of a social partner’s frame-of-reference, which creates a spatial overlap between stimulus-response location in the Joint (but not Individual) task. However, JSE’s domain-specificity is debated. We investigated the potential content of co-representation during task-sharing—typical geometric stimuli were replaced with two coloured sets of animal silhouettes. Each set was assigned to either the participant themselves or their partner. Critically, a surprise image recognition task followed, aiming to identify any partner-driven effects in incidental memory exclusive to the Joint task-sharing condition, versus the Individual condition. Bayesian statistics indicated a robust absence of the key JSE, limiting interpretations of incidental memory findings, with implications regarding JSE’s replicability.