ABSTRACT
Many scientific fields continue to explore cognition related to Theory of Mind abilities, where people reason about the mental states of themselves and others. Experimental and theoretical approaches to this problem have largely avoided issues concerning the contents of representations employed in this class of reasoning. In this paper, we describe a new approach to the investigation of representations related to Theory of Mind abilities that is based on the analysis of commonsense strategies. We argue that because the mental representations of strategies must include concepts of mental states and processes, the large-scale analysis of strategies can be informative of the representational scope of Theory of Mind abilities. The results of an analysis of this sort are presented as a description of thirty representational areas that organize the breadth of Theory of Mind concepts. Implications for Theory Theories and Simulation Theories of Theory of Mind reasoning are discussed.
