Theory of Mind in non-linguistic animals: a multimodal approach

Historically, the dependence of cognitive abilities on language has always been established. In the absence of language, the focus has been on studying the communicative systems of non-human animals to understand what, if any, cognitive abilities they might support. This research points out that, historically, both language and other communication systems have been studied from a unimodal point of view, privileging the study of the auditory component of communication, and ignoring the other sensory components. For the first time, the results of multimodal studies are being integrated into Theory of Mind studies in non-linguistic animals. Following a particular line of research, a bottom-up model of mental state attribution is proposed, based on empirical data rather than metaphysical theories about the nature of mind. Specifically, experimental protocols are proposed for attribution of a perceptual Theory of Mind or attribution of false beliefs in non-linguistic animals. These protocols incorporate the behavioral phenomenon of multimodal shift, i.e. the ability of an animal to switch communication channels when the one it was using is disrupted, to solve the logical problem of dual interpretability of data that characterizes empirical research on Theory of Mind in animals. A theory of the multimodal nature of mind is also mentioned, which proposes a non-dependence of Theory of Mind on language.