Mentalizing, conventionally defined as the process in which we infer the inner thoughts and intentions of others, is a fundamental component of human social cognition. Yet its role, and the nuanced layers involved, in real world social interaction are rarely discussed. To account for this lack of theory, we propose the interactive mentalizing theory (IMT) -to emphasize the role of metacognition in different mentalizing components. We discuss the connection between mentalizing, metacognition, and social interaction in the context of four elements of mentalizing: (i) Metacognition-inference of our own thought processes and social cognitions and which is central to all other components of mentalizing including: (ii) first-order mentalizing-inferring the thoughts and intentions of an agent's mind; (iii) personal second-order mentalizing-inference of other's mentalizing of one's own mind; (iv) Collective mentalizing: which takes at least two forms (a) vicarious mentalizing: adopting another's mentalizing of an agent (i.e., what we think others think of an agent) and (b) co-mentalizing: mentalizing about an agent in conjunction with others' mentalizing of that agent (i.e., conforming to others beliefs about another agent's internal states). The weights of these four elements is determined by metacognitive insight and confidence in one's own or another's mentalizing ability, yielding a dynamic interaction between these circuits. To advance our knowledge on mentalizing during live social interaction, we identify how these subprocesses can be organized by different target agents and facilitated by combining computational modeling and interactive brain approaches.

中文翻译：

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社交互动过程中的心理思考：一个四部分模型。

心理化通常被定义为我们推断他人内在思想和意图的过程，是人类社会认知的基本组成部分。然而，很少讨论其在现实世界社会互动中的作用以及所涉及的细微差别。为了解决这种理论上的不足，我们提出了交互式心理理论（IMT），以强调元认知在不同心理成分中的作用。我们将在心理化的四个要素的背景下讨论心理化，元认知和社会互动之间的联系：（i）元认知，即我们自己的思维过程和社会认知的推论，这对心理化的所有其他组成部分至关重要，包括：（ii）一阶思维化-推断代理人思想的思想和意图；（iii）个人二阶心理化-他人对自己的心理进行心理化的推断；（iv）集体思维：至少采取两种形式（a）替代思维：采用他人对代理的思维（即，我们认为其他人对代理的看法）和（b）共同心理：结合思维对代理进行思维与他人对代理人的心理思考（即，遵循他人对另一代理人内部状态的看法）。这四个要素的权重由元认知洞察力和对自己或他人的思维能力的信心决定，从而在这两个回路之间产生动态的交互作用。为了增进我们在现场社交互动中进行心理思考的知识，