Mid-frontal EEG alpha asymmetries predict individual differences in one aspect of theory of mind: Mental state decoding

Abstract

Mental state decoding is the aspect of theory-of-mind (ToM) reasoning that requires individuals to make judgments about others’ mental states based solely on immediately available information. We investigated whether individual differences in resting, task-independent frontal EEG alpha asymmetries predicted performance on the “Mind in the Eyes” (MIE) task, which is an established measure of mental state decoding skills. Group analyses showed that mental state decoding skills were stronger among those with right-lateralized frontal activation. Individual differences analyses showed that the degree of relative right mid-frontal activation predicted performance on the task. These findings establish a neural correlate of individual differences in one aspect of ToM, and hypotheses about the precise mechanism involved are discussed.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to MAS, and by an NSERC Student Fellowship to JF.

We thank Carly Lang for her help with data reduction and analysis, Valerie Kuhlmeier and Kate Harkness for helpful comments on previous versions of the manuscript, and Simon Baron-Cohen for generously providing us with stimulus materials.