ToMM, ToBY, and Agency: Core architecture and domain specificity

“…of the distinct evolutionary phylogenies of our cognitive systems for tracking agents’ goals and perceptual access (Bloom, 2004; Csibra & Gergely, 1998; Johnson, 2003; Leslie, 1994; Low & Perner, 2012); or, they might be a cultural contrivance invented by French philosophers (Descartes, 1985).”

“Infants’ ability to make sense of physical events develops substantially during the first year of life, and psychologists have long been interested in elucidating the nature and causes of this development (e.g., Baillargeon, 1993; Bower, 1974; Bruner, 1968; Leslie, 1994; Piaget, 1954; Spelke, 1988).”

“…via the ability to infer agent's sensorimotor intentions, leading finally to the development of a full blown theory of mind in which the child can attribute intentions, goals and mental states to the speaker (Leslie, 1994)—all of which will contribute to the reduction of referential uncertainty.”

“another; by (at least) they make sophisticated causal inferences about object chanics and launching ( Leslie, 1994 ).”

“…on the grounds that lower-level explanations are always possible and always preferable (for examples from both sides see Premack, 1990; Leslie, 1994; Spelke, 1994, 1998; Haith, 1998; Aslin, 2000; Bogartz et al., 2000; Cohen and Marks, 2002; Wynn, 2002; Kagan, 2008; Ruffman et al.,…”

“This debate emerged in response to an inXuential account of children’s pretense oVered by Leslie (1983, 1987, 1994a, 2002), which he termed the metarepresentational theory.”

“…advocates of a nativist or an early, full mentalistic capacity account take the results of spontaneous-response FBT at face value, claiming that they prove genuine false belief understanding (Carruthers, 2013; Jacob, 2013; Leslie, 1994; Leslie, Friedman, & German, 2004; Scott & Baillargeon, 2017).”

“(see Leslie, 1994; Baron-Cohen, 1995; Dennett, 1988).”

“Drawing from the models of Baron-Cohen [2] and Leslie [ 3 ], a novel architecture called embodied theory of mind was developed to link high-level cognitive skills to the low-level perceptual abilities of a humanoid robot.”

“…and “inanimate” objects and apply different expectations and causal rules to them (Gelman, Durgin, & Kaufman, 1995; Gelman, Spelke, & Meck, 1983; Leslie, 1994; Spelke, Breinlinger, Macomber, & Jacobson, 1992), they can understand the basics of small numbers and amounts (McCrink & Spelke,…”

“While there were always some in the field who claimed that basic mindreading abilities are innate, and that the appearance of development reflects failures of performance (Leslie, 1994; Scholl & Leslie, 1999), this was decidedly a minority position.”

“Leslie (1987), Leslie and Thaiss (1992), Leslie (1994) has emphasised the algorithmic conception and, in some moods, Pinker (1994) and Sperber (1994) have placed emphasis on the idea the TOM is an innate body of knowledge.”

“According to the mentalistic view, even young infants are capable of attributing (at least simple) mental states to agents (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1994; Johnson, 2005; Leslie, 1994b; Luo & Baillargeon, 2005a; Premack & Premack, 1995).”

“Piaget (1954), for example, proposed that between 4 and 7 months of age infants start to produce secondary circular reactions whereby they repeat actions that caused an effect in the world.”

“Under Leslie’s model of ‘theory of mind’ development, the ability to engage in pretence together with the ability to recognize pretence in other people depends upon the mental state concept ‘pretend’ (Leslie, 1987, 1988, 1994a, 2000).”

“This evidence has been taken to suggest that infants have an innate or earlydeveloping sensitivity to other peopleʼs knowledge and belief states, which operates without explicit instruction and with minimal cognitive resources (Baillargeon et al., 2010; Gergely & Csibra, 2003; Leslie, 1994).”

“Psychological objects are unique in that, unlike physical objects, they tend to move around on their own, and more importantly, have the capacity to act on other objects ( Leslie 1994; Premack 1990; Premack and Premack 1997).”

“Several theorists argue that infants broadly distinguish objects set in motion and changing direction through contact from self-propelled objects moving irregularly and contingent at a distance upon others (Premack 1990; Mandler 1992; Leslie 1994).”

“The second route is through the phylogenetic result of pre-existing domainspecific innate modules (Baron-Cohen, 1995; U. Frith & Frith, 2003; Leslie, 1987, 1994).”

“To date, developmentalists have amassed a great deal of evidence in support of this theory (Baillargeon, 1995; Leslie, 1994; Spelke, 1994).”

“Several TOM characterizations have been proposed (Baron-Cohen, Leslie et al. 1985; Leslie 1994).”

“Their behavior is typically explained as a failure or inability to attribute false beliefs to others (see Gopnik 1993; Leslie 1994; Perner 1991 for reviews of this literature.)”

“…conceptual distinction between animacy, physical or causal agency, intentionality, etc. (e.g., see Baron-Cohen, 1994; Frankenhuis & Barrett, 2013; Leslie, 1994, 1995; Premack, 1990; in particular, for the discussion on the dissociation between selfpropulsion cues and goal attribution see Biro &…”

“…implicatures serves as an input to the semantic interpretation of a sentence.2 The module that is most relevant to the present work is the Theory of Mind module, whose workings were explored by Baron-Cohen (1995), Leslie (1994), Scholl and Leslie (1999), and Sperber and Wilson (2002), among others.”

“This is because it is widely agreed among developmental psychologists that mindreading admits of two distinct varieties, which emerge at different points in the course of infant development (Wellman 1990 ; Leslie 1994 ; Baron-Cohen 1995 ; Gopnik and Meltzoff 1997 ; Song and Baillargeon 2008 ).”

“…have proposed that infants attribute intentionality quite broadly, based on mechanisms designed to detect any goal-directed action, regardless of the identity of the actor (e.g., BaronCohen, 1995; Csibra et al., 1999; Johnson, 2000, 2003; Leslie, 1994, 1995; Luo & Baillargeon, 2005; Premack, 1990.)”

“All of the information included in this representation becomes subject to infants’ core knowledge [ 28 ,29].”

“Some have therefore claimed that pretending is a special case in which children have early access to a representational understanding of minds (Flavell, 1988; Forguson & Gopnik, 1988; Leslie, 1994; Moses & Chandler , 1992; Siegler, 1991; Taylor & Carlson, 1997).”

“…it has been argued that we possess innate representations of the principles of grammar (Pinker, 1994), physics (Carey and Spelke, 1994), mathematics (Wynn, 1992) and psychology (Leslie, 1994) Despite its theoretical utility, however, the positing of innate representations remains contentious.”

“18 A similar idea is behind Pylyshyn’s notion of compiled transducer, i.e., post-perceptual processes that become encapsulated with enough time and repetition (Pylyshyn 1984, 1999, p. 360). temporary researchers working on this topic (see e.g. Leslie 1984, 1994).”

“Others have speculated that observable characteristics of the actions themselves can elicit goal-attributions, particularly the presence of an effect and/or an equifinal outcome arrived at through variable means (Gergely et al ., 1995; Heider, 1958; Leslie, 1994; Premack & Premack, 1994).”

“Using looking as an indicator of knowledge, researchers have found that infants know that hidden objects continue to exist behind occluders, that objects move in continuous spatiotemporal paths, and that two objects cannot pass through one another (Baillargeon, 1995; Leslie, 1994; Spelke, 1994).”

“According to Leslie (1994, 1996), the capacity to reason about agents is based on a specific cognitive module.”

“Although Leslie (1994a) does not make predictions about which of the mechanisms ToBY or ToMM1 would be impaired in autism, it is nevertheless reasonable to predict that the children with autism might not clearly distinguish agents from non-agents, i.e. show an impairment of ToBY, and that they…”

“…“theory of mind,” which entails, among other things, the attribution of beliefs and desires to people, and the appreciation that people may have false beliefs (Avis & Harris, 1991; Flavell, Zhang, Zou, Dong, & Qui, 1983; Gardner, Harris, Ohmoto, & Hamazaki, 1988; Leslie, 1994; Wellman, 1990).”

“…such problems include how to: select a mate (Buss, 1992), speak and understand language (Pinker, 1994; Pinker and Bloom, 1990), engage in and reason about social exchange (Cosmides and Tooby, 1989, 1992), and explain and predict each other's behaviour (Baron-Cohen, 1995, 1999; Leslie, 1994).”

“These findings suggest that infants do not simply perceptually distinguish self-moving from inert objects but also categorize them as ‘‘mechanical agents’’ ( Leslie, 1994 ).”

“…& Tooby, 2008) are useless for reasoning about object mechanics, which is governed by a different system (Baillargeon, Li, Gertner & Wu, 2011; Leslie, 1994; Spelke, 1990); both coexist alongside systems specialized for reasoning about precautionary rules (Boyer & Lienard, 2006; Fiddck,…”

“The first of these, theory of mind, can be defined as the capacity to attribute mental and emotional states to an intentional agent (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1995; Dennett, 1987; Leslie, 1994).”

“…(e.g. Vuong & Tarr, 2004), but in the present context we should focus on some specific aspects of motion, namely those that reveal distinctive mechanical properties of the agents, such as the presence of internal sources of energy that cause a body to move (Leslie, 1994; Luo & Baillargeon, 2005).”

“natural way to make sense of agents (Baron-Cohen, 1994; Leslie, 1995; Premack,”