Cognition Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Cognition, including details on psychology, neuroscience, memory, brain theory.

Theory of mind is independent of episodic memory.

Rosenbaum RS, Stuss DT, Levine B, Tulving E

Department of Psychology, York University and Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada. shaynar@yorku.ca

Theory of mind (ToM) to infer other people's current mental states and episodic memory of personal happenings have been assumed to be closely related. We report two participants with severely impaired episodic memory who perform indistinguishably from healthy controls on objective ToM tests. These results suggest that ToM can function independently of episodic memory.

Published 23 November 2007 in Science, 318(5854): 1257.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2005-2008 Cognition Research Today. All Rights Reserved.