| Summary: | People model other
people's mental states in order to understand and predict their behavior.
Sometimes they model what others think about them as well: ``He thinks that I
intend to stop.'' Such second-order theory of mind is needed to navigate some
social situations, for example, to make optimal decisions in turn-taking games.
Adults sometimes find this very difficult. Sometimes they make decisions that
do not fit their predictions about the other player. However, the main
bottleneck for decision makers is to take a second-order perspective required
to make a correct opponent model. We report a methodical investigation into
supporting factors that help adults do better. We presented subjects with
two-player, three-turn games in which optimal decisions required second-order
theory of mind (Hedden and Zhang, 2002). We applied three ``scaffolds'' that,
theoretically, should facilitate second-order perspective-taking: 1) stepwise
training, from simple one-person games to games requiring second-order theory
of mind; 2) prompting subjects to predict the opponent's next decision before
making their own decision; and 3) a realistic visual task representation. The
performance of subjects in the eight resulting combinations shows that stepwise
training, but not the other two scaffolds, improves subjects' second-order
opponent models and thereby their own decisions.
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