A relational frame account of the development of complex cognitive phenomena: perspective-taking, false belief understanding, and deception

Résumé 0

"Cognitive psychologists have devoted considerable attention to the complex skills describedas perspective-taking, understanding false belief, and deception. Much of the availableresearch on these phenomena has been driven by a conceptual approach referred to as‘Theory of Mind’. The current paper reviews the Theory of Mind account of perspectivetaking,false belief and deception in terms of the development of increasingly complexlevels of understanding the informational states of the self and others. In contrast, thesephenomena have attracted little interest traditionally from behavioral psychologists, andthe current paper presents conceptual and empirical evidence that this is changing.Specifically, an alternative approach to these skills from a functional behavioral frameworkis presented in the context of Relational Frame Theory, a modern behavioral account ofhuman language and cognition. The paper describes the relational frame approach toperspective-taking, false belief and deception, and presents several recent studies thathave investigated this approach. The results of the studies indicate the potential utility ofthis approach and also show considerable overlap with the results of Theory of Mindresearch."