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Schneider, Dana, Lam, Rebecca, Bayliss, Andrew P. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4810-7758 and Dux, Paul E.
(2012)
Cognitive load disrupts implicit theory of mind processing: An eye-movement study.
Psychological Science, 23 (8).
pp. 842-847.
ISSN 1467-9280
Abstract
Eye movements in Sally-Anne false-belief tasks appear to reflect the ability to implicitly monitor the mental states of other individuals (theory of mind, or ToM). It has recently been proposed that an early-developing, efficient, and automatically operating ToM system subserves this ability. Surprisingly absent from the literature, however, is an empirical test of the influence of domain-general executive processing resources on this implicit ToM system. In the study reported here, a dual-task method was employed to investigate the impact of executive load on eye movements in an implicit Sally-Anne false-belief task. Under no-load conditions, adult participants displayed eye movement behavior consistent with implicit belief processing, whereas evidence for belief processing was absent for participants under cognitive load. These findings indicate that the cognitive system responsible for implicitly tracking beliefs draws at least minimally on executive processing resources. Thus, even the most low-level processing of beliefs appears to reflect a capacity-limited operation.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Social Cognition Research Group Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception |
| Depositing User: | Pure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Oct 2015 14:00 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Apr 2023 03:31 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/54757 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/0956797612439070 |
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