Theory of mind, the attribution of mental states to others is one form of social cognition. The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of another, much simpler, form of social cognition, which I call vicarious representation. Vicarious representation is the attribution of other-centered properties to objects. This mental capacity is different from, and much simpler than, theory of mind as it does not imply the understanding (or representation) of the mental (or even perceptual) states of another agents. I argue that the most convincing experiments that are supposed to show that non-human primates have theory of mind in fact demonstrate that they are capable of vicarious representation. The same is true for the experiments about the theory of mind of infants under 12 months.

心理理论认为，精神状态对他人的归因是社会认知的一种形式。本文的目的是强调另一种更简单的社会认知形式的重要性，我称这种形式为替代表示。替代表示是将其他中心属性赋予对象。这种心理能力不同于心理理论，并且比心理理论简单得多，因为它并不意味着对其他主体的心理（甚至感知）状态的理解（或表示）。我认为，最有说服力的实验本来可以证明非人类灵长类动物具有心智理论，但事实证明它们具有替代的能力。关于12个月以下婴儿的心理理论的实验也是如此。