Kentridge and Heywood (this issue) extend the concept of metacognition to include unconscious pro... more Kentridge and Heywood (this issue) extend the concept of metacognition to include unconscious processes. We acknowledge the possible contribution of unconscious processes, but favor a central role of awareness in metacognition. We welcome Shimamura's (this issue) extension of the concept of metacognitive regulation to include aspects of working memory, and its relation to executive attention. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2009
The ability to understand other people&am... more The ability to understand other people's behavior in terms of mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, is central to social interaction. It has been argued that the interpersonal problems of patients with behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (FTD-b) are due to a dysfunction of that system. We used first- and second-order false-belief tasks to assess theory-of-mind reasoning in a group of patients with FTD-b and a cognitively matched group of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Both patient groups were equally impaired relative to a healthy elderly group in the cognitively demanding second-order false-belief tasks, revealing that cognitive demands are an important factor in false-belief task performance. Both patient groups reached ceiling performance in the first-order false-belief tasks with minimal cognitive demands, despite the striking difference in their social graces. These results suggest that a conceptual deficit in theory of mind-as measured by the false-belief task-is not at the core of the differences between FTD-b and AD.
Kentridge and Heywood (this issue) extend the concept of metacognition to include unconscious pro... more Kentridge and Heywood (this issue) extend the concept of metacognition to include unconscious processes. We acknowledge the possible contribution of unconscious processes, but favor a central role of awareness in metacognition. We welcome Shimamura's (this issue) extension of the concept of metacognitive regulation to include aspects of working memory, and its relation to executive attention. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2009
The ability to understand other people&am... more The ability to understand other people's behavior in terms of mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, is central to social interaction. It has been argued that the interpersonal problems of patients with behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (FTD-b) are due to a dysfunction of that system. We used first- and second-order false-belief tasks to assess theory-of-mind reasoning in a group of patients with FTD-b and a cognitively matched group of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Both patient groups were equally impaired relative to a healthy elderly group in the cognitively demanding second-order false-belief tasks, revealing that cognitive demands are an important factor in false-belief task performance. Both patient groups reached ceiling performance in the first-order false-belief tasks with minimal cognitive demands, despite the striking difference in their social graces. These results suggest that a conceptual deficit in theory of mind-as measured by the false-belief task-is not at the core of the differences between FTD-b and AD.
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