Our ability to understand others’ minds stands at the foundation of human learning, communication, cooperation, and social life more broadly. Although humans’ ability to mentalize has been well-studied throughout the cognitive sciences, little attention has been paid to whether and how mentalizing differs across contexts. Classic developmental studies have examined mentalizing within minimally social contexts, in which a single agent seeks a neutral inanimate object. Such object-directed acts may be common, but they are typically consequential only to the object-seeking agent themselves. Here, we review a host of indirect evidence suggesting that contexts providing the opportunity to evaluate prospective social partners may facilitate mentalizing across development. Our article calls on cognitive scientists to study mentalizing in contexts where it counts.

我们理解他人思想的能力是人类学习、交流、合作和更广泛的社会生活的基础。尽管人类的心智化能力在整个认知科学中得到了充分的研究，但很少有人关注心智化是否以及如何在不同情况下有所不同。经典的发展研究考察了最低限度的社会背景下的心智化，在这种背景下，一个个体寻求一个中性的无生命物体。这种以对象为导向的行为可能很常见，但它们通常只对寻求对象的代理人本身有影响。在这里，我们回顾了大量间接证据，这些证据表明提供评估潜在社会伙伴的机会的环境可能会促进跨发展的心智化。