Planning with Theory of Mind

Theory of Mind research has traditionally emphasized its predictive function (e.g., predicting someone will be angry after being stuck in traffic). Prediction tasks have dominated decades of experimental and computational research. Theory of Mind is also used to plan interventions on other minds (e.g., choosing how to cheer someone up who has been stuck in traffic) and representations used for planning will have different requirements from those only used for prediction. Research on planning emphasizes the importance of abstract and structured causal models, like Theory of Mind. Focusing on Theory of Mind for planning can illuminate a range of socio-cognitive phenomena, such as interpersonal affect regulation, impression management, pragmatic speech, and pedagogy. Understanding Theory of Mind should begin with an analysis of the problems it solves. The traditional answer is that Theory of Mind is used for predicting others’ thoughts and actions. However, the same Theory of Mind is also used for planning to change others’ thoughts and actions. Planning requires that Theory of Mind consists of abstract structured causal representations and supports efficient search and selection from innumerable possible actions. Theory of Mind contrasts with less cognitively demanding alternatives: statistical predictive models of other people’s actions, or model-free reinforcement of actions by their effects on other people. Theory of Mind is likely used to plan novel interventions and predict their effects, for example, in pedagogy, emotion regulation, and impression management. Understanding Theory of Mind should begin with an analysis of the problems it solves. The traditional answer is that Theory of Mind is used for predicting others’ thoughts and actions. However, the same Theory of Mind is also used for planning to change others’ thoughts and actions. Planning requires that Theory of Mind consists of abstract structured causal representations and supports efficient search and selection from innumerable possible actions. Theory of Mind contrasts with less cognitively demanding alternatives: statistical predictive models of other people’s actions, or model-free reinforcement of actions by their effects on other people. Theory of Mind is likely used to plan novel interventions and predict their effects, for example, in pedagogy, emotion regulation, and impression management. a mental representation that categorizes and generalizes across instances with diverse particular features. a model of the structure of relations between variables that supports counterfactual and hypothetical reasoning (i.e., one that specifies the probability of one variable setting conditioned upon intervention on another variable). actions chosen based on learned action–reward associations. Habits do not represent, and cannot be used to predict, the outcomes of actions. learning the value of an action, in context, from repeated association of the action with subsequent reward. a mechanism for action selection that relies on using a model to simulate the future consequences of potential interventions in order to choose one that maximizes expected value. a model of statistical correlations or sequences of events that can be queried to generate an expectation for one variable or state, given an observation of another variable. mechanisms and strategies for organizing memory that facilitate rapid retrieval of context- and goal-appropriate action representations in large state spaces. a mental representation that is the composition of simpler representations and whose content derives from these constituents and how they are combined. a causal model of the mind, specifying how mental states like perceptions, beliefs, and desires combine to cause actions and feelings. top-down recombination of causal elements to construct a simplified causal model that is useful for planning in context.