How the Mind Reads Other Minds

摘要

Understanding what others are thinking is a human exclusive. Now researchers are tracking how the brain performs this feat and speculating about how it evolved Imagine a boy sitting on a couch about to unwrap a chocolate bar. His mother announces that she's taking him to soccer practice. He tucks the chocolate under the couch for safekeeping and leaves. A few minutes later, his sister comes into the room in search of her teddy bear. When she looks under the couch she is surprised to find an unopened chocolate bar, which she then hides behind a bookshelf. When her brother comes home, drooling for chocolate, where will he look? This may not seem like a difficult question: It's glaringly obvious that the boy will look under the couch. But to get the right answer, you have to perform an extraordinary mental feat: understand the boy's intentions and beliefs―regardless of their accuracy― and use that information to predict his action. And the skill doesn't come easily: Until the age of 5 or so, children answer that the boy will look behind the bookshelf, where they know the chocolate bar to be.