{"pk":50265,"title":"Evidence for Distinct Factive and Non-Factive Mentalization Systems in Adults and Infants","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Despite extensive research on mentalization, few studies target the representations and the cognitive systems that underlie different mental state attributions. In two eye-tracking experiments with adults (n=32) and 19-month-old infants (n=24), we examined whether factive (knowledge, ignorance) and non-factive (false belief, true belief) mental state attributions belong to seperate representational systems, relying on the assumption that transfer within-system should occur faster than between-systems. Participants watched animated videos of an agent tracking a hidden ball that could hide in two locations, requiring mental state attribution updates from non-factive to either another non-factive or to a factive mental state. Saccadic reaction times (SRTs) to the ball's reappearance were measured. Results showed that both adults and infants had faster SRTs when updates occurred between two non-factive mental states compared to updates between a non-factive and a factive mental state. This supports the existence of distinct systems for factive and non-factive mental state attribution.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Cognitive development; Social cognition; Theory of Mind; Eye tracking"}],"section":"Member Abstracts with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/92v791vv","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Anna","middle_name":"","last_name":"Kisp‡l","name_suffix":"","institution":"Central European University","department":""},{"first_name":"Agnes","middle_name":"","last_name":"Kovacs","name_suffix":"","institution":"CEU","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/50265/galley/38227/download/"}]}