ToM and Stephens/Hasson

I thought that this week's readings were particularly interesting. I was especially interested with the Stephens and Hasson experiment article, "Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication". In the experiment, Stephens and Hasson attempt to find out the neurological activity that occurs during a conversation. In particular, they attempt to see whether or not the listener and the speaker have the same neurological activity, and whether or not the same parts of the brain are utilized. Their findings are pretty interesting. Essentially, they found that both the listener and the speaker utilize the same parts of their brain during a conversation, particularly, they engage the production/comprehension centers of the brain. They also noted that there is a temporal lag in the activation of these brain functions between the speaker and the listener, which makes sense as it accounts for the auditory lag that takes place. The most interesting part of the research, however, found that as the conversation gets better and both members are equally interested and participating, the anticipatory function of the brain is utilized as well.

The last bit about the anticipatory function is what interested me the most. It seems to suggest that as two people communicate, and their communication becomes clearer and both parties are able to understand what the other is trying to say, they begin to know what the other person is going to say before they say it. In many ways, it's almost like mind-reading, as the communication gets better, it is almost like they begin to inhabit the other person's mind and know what they are going to say before it is said. I think this aspect of conversing adds a lot of weight to Theory of Mind and pushes the idea of the phenomenon even further. Particularly, it shows how we essentially do mind read by putting ourselves in other peoples shoes to think what they are trying to say. As two people become more in sync during a conversation, it truly shows that they, in fact, inhabit each other’s perspective.