Direct social perception, mindreading and Bayesian predictive coding

Abstract

Mindreading accounts of social cognition typically claim that we cannot directly perceive the mental states of other agents and therefore have to exercise certain cognitive capacities in order to infer them. In recent years this view has been challenged by proponents of the direct social perception (DSP) thesis, who argue that the mental states of other agents can be directly perceived. In this paper we show, first, that the main disagreement between proponents of DSP and mindreading accounts has to do with the so-called 'sandwich model' of social cognition. Although proponents of DSP are critical of this model, we argue that they still seem to accept the distinction between perception, cognition and action that underlies it. Second, we contrast the sandwich model of social cognition with an alternative theoretical framework that is becoming increasingly popular in the cognitive neurosciences: Bayesian Predictive Coding (BPC). We show that the BPC framework renders a principled distinction between perception, cognition and action obsolete, and can accommodate elements of both DSP and mindreading accounts.

Keywords: Bayesian predictive coding; Direct social perception; Embodied cognition; Mindreading.