Contextual influence over deriving another's false beliefs using a relational triangulation perspective taking protocol (RT-PTP-M2)

The original relational triangulation perspective taking protocol (RT-PTP-M1; Guinther, 2017) was extended with a second training and testing module (RT-PTP-M2) showing contextual influence over derivation of another’s “false beliefs” during an analog of the Sally-Anne test for Theory of Mind (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985; Wimmer & Perner, 1983) in verbally competent adults. Under the respective contextual control of experimental stimuli X2 and X3, participants first learned through direct conditioning procedures that avatars A2 and A3 “behave the same way” towards target stimuli.

Participants then made object discriminations under X2 according to the spatial perspective of A2, who saw an initial target at a particular location but could not see that the target was later swapped with a second target; reporting the identity of the initial target was reinforced for participants. Among participants who had failed baseline testing, this directly trained “false belief attribution” repertoire was then spontaneously emitted by participants relative to the perspective of A3 under X3 during the final test for derivation. Other participants were able to derive false belief under X3 without the X2 attribution training. These results suggest the RT-PTP procedures were successful in causing X3 to acquire context-ofrelating functions for exerting control over perspectival relational triangulation.