Dissociating mentalizing from nonsocial problem solving - Is thinking about thinking different from thinking about things?

Mentalizing is the ability to make inferences about what other people are thinking or feeling. Psychologists have usually thought that mentalizing involves the same general-purpose mental operations as nonsocial problem solving. However, results from brain imaging studies, such as fMRI, suggest that mentalizing and nonsocial problem solving involve independent processes. Because brain imaging only provides correlational data, it needs to be complemented by other methods better suited to answer questions about causality. With Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) researchers can temporarily decrease activity in parts of the brain to study that area’s causal contribution to specific cognitive tasks. This project attempts to show that mentalizing and nonsocial problem solving involve independent processes. This will be done by using a combination of fMRI and TMS to show that there is a double dissociation between operations involved in mentalizing and nonsocial problem solving. The outcome of this project will help to resolve an issue of great importance to social psychology and may also have important clinical implications