Reinterpreting the Mentality of Apes

This chapter reviews the evidence for theory of mind in great apes and evaluates Povinelli's so-called 'reinterpretation hypothesis'. Introduction As a soccer player, one of us was often confronted with the challenging dilemma of taking penalty kicks. Up to about age 13 I (T.S.) could quite reliably convert the shot by simply peeking briefly to one corner of the goal, running up and then casually placing the ball in the other corner. I relied not on the accuracy or velocity of my shot, but almost entirely on fooling the keeper that I intended to shoot in the opposite direction. But then some clever keepers picked up on this simplest of tricks and tried to thwart my attempt by jumping in the opposite corner to the one I looked to. Some even tried to turn the tables by offering one side (moving closer to the other post). The battle became increasingly more challenging as I was sizing up the keeper's ability to read my intentions and do the opposite of what I thought he thought. For example, I pretend to place it right, but I think that he thinks I am only pretending to place it right - so I may chose to place it right after all. This is 'theory of mind' in action. Most theory-of-mind research uses verbal paradigms to assess children's reasoning about the mind. As the above example illustrates, however, theory of mind manifests in our non-verbal actions. Naturally, investigations into potential theory of mind in non-human animals must rely on such non-verbal performances. Whether our closest animal relatives share such manifestations of theory of mind has been a topic of much research and discussion in recent years. But identification of an unequivocal behavioural indicator for mind-reading has proved frustratingly difficult..