成人在某些情况下推理他人心理状态时也会像较小的儿童一样出现自我中心化。本研究通过控制完成心理理论任务的反应时间,比较成人被试在有/无时间压力情况下推理他人心理状态时行为表现上的差异。其中,实验1选取24名大学生被试进行指示交流任务(考察视觉观点采择),实验2选取76名大学生被试进行成人版意外地点任务(考察错误信念理解)。结果发现,在限制反应时间的条件下,被试会更加自我中心化。两个实验的结果支持了成人推理他人心理状态可能是一个两阶段的加工过程的假设,即先"自我中心"再"调整":首先以自我心理状态进行自我中心锚定,然后(若自我和他人心理状态存在差异)克服自我中心,理解他人的心理状态。
When reasoning about other's mental states,adults sometimes would behave in an egocentric way,as the young children who cannot pass the theory of mind tasks before the age of four or five always do.The study conducted two experiments,each of which introduced a complicated theory of mind task adapted from the classic tasks,examining perspective-taking and false-belief reasoning respectively.We aimed to compare adult participants' egocentric behaviors under time pressure and those performed leisurely,when reasoning about others' mental states.Experiment 1 used a referential communication task simulated on a computer to explore adults' visual perspective-taking.Participants were directed by a virtual cartoon character to fetch a object around a 3×3 array of boxas on the computer screen.The participant and the cartoon director were seated face to face with the array set between them. Some of the objects were occluded from the director by a slat but still observable to the participants,creating a discrepancy in their visual perspective.24 adults participated in experiment 1 and each of them finished two trials.In time limited trial,participants must respond within 2 seconds,and in time unlimited trial,participants could take as long time as they needed to make a response.Results showed that adults were more likely to ignore other's different perspective under time pressure(18.3%egocentric mistakes) than those without time limit(2.5%egocentric mistakes),t(23) = 4.389,p.001.Experiment 2 used an unexpected location task for adults to explore false-belief reasoning.Participants were asked to give estimated the probability that the ignorant character with a false belief would first search a bag,which the participants knew the target object was in,and another probability of another bag,which the participants knew the target object was not in.24 of the total 76 participants(false-belief time limited group) must respond within 7.5 seconds,25 of them(false-belief time unlimited group) could conte