Creating a shared representational space

The mechanisms that make the unique sociality of humans possible have long been in the focus of cognitive science. In this paper, we review recent advancements in the study of three fundamental social cognitive functions (social categorization, theory of mind and social learning) in order to outline a theory that emphasizes the need to consider their interconnectedness. We highlight that while the literature on theory of mind mostly focuses on computations that rely on episodic information to infer the current mental state of a social partner, a large part of mentalization processes depends on a shortcut whereby the mentalizer attributes a certain body of knowledge to the partner by default. These default attributions may depend on salient characteristics of the target person, such as their social category membership. Thus, we propose that the ability to represent the social world along categories and the capacity to read others' minds are used in an integrated way to efficiently assess the epistemic states of fellow humans by creating a shared representational space. Moreover, we emphasize that the emergence of this shared representational space is both the result of and a prerequisite to efficiently learn about both the physical and the social environment.