Opaque windows in puppet studies: A response to Lillard (2022), Rakoczy (2022), Wellman & Yu (2022), and Yu & Wellman (2022)

In our article (Packer & Moreno-Dulcey, 2022) we pointed out that the use of puppets in Theory of Mind tasks (1) requires young children to pretend, which (2) introduces a confound, and also (3) reflects a failure to distinguish scientific and folk psychology. In their comments Lillard (2022) and Wellman and Yu (2022; Yu & Wellman, 2022) claim that use of puppets requires not pretense but an understanding that they 'stand-in' for people, without explaining how this differs from pretense, or how it avoids a confound. Rakoczy (2022) in contrast agrees with us that pretense is required but argues that it uses the same code and concepts as the real world. We recall his earlier appreciation that institutional reality has the logical form of pretense. We suggest that 'mind' is a culturally and historically bound institutional fact, and point out that a typical ToM task involves multiple levels of pretense, games, and institutional reality.

Automated summary

In our article, we highlighted the use of puppets in Theory of Mind tasks and how it requires young children to pretend, which introduces a confound and fails to distinguish scientific and folk psychology. However, Lillard and Wellman and Yu argue that the use of puppets does not involve pretense but rather an understanding of them as 'stand-ins' for people, without providing clear differentiation or avoidance of confounding factors. On the other hand, Rakoczy agrees with the necessity of pretense but argues that it operates on the same code and concepts as the real world. We believe that 'mind' is a culturally and historically constrained institutional fact, and ToM tasks involve multiple levels of pretense, games, and institutional reality.