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Theory of Mind: Autism as Mindblindness?

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Title: Theory of Mind: Autism as Mindblindness?


1
Theory of Mind Autism as Mindblindness?
  • Dr Jason Low
  • School of Psychology
  • Victoria University of Wellington

2
Georges de la Tour, The Fortune Teller
3
ToM and the full range of mental states
  • Theory of mind is one quintessential ability that
    makes us human
  • Test of Tom have been found to be effective as
    markers of pervasive developmental disorders
    (e.g., autism)
  • Autism as mind-blindness

4
1. Mental Physical Distinction
  • Wellman Estes (1986)
  • Listen to two stories
  • A is thinking about a dog vs B is holding a dog
  • Who can pat the dog?
  • Baron-Cohen (1989) 3-4 yr olds vs. children with
    autism with vma of 4 yrs

5
2. Appearance Reality Distinction
  • Flavell, Green Flavell (1986)
  • Sponge-rock
  • Baron-Cohen (1989)
  • 3-4 yrs vs cwa (4yrs vma)
  • Autism difficult with understanding different
    between subjective and objective reality

6
3. First Order False Belief Tasks
  • Inferring one persons mental state
  • Unexpected Contents
  • Unexpected Transfer
  • Sally-Anne Experiment (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985)
  • Critical question Where will Sally look for her
    marble?
  • Problems general intellectual understanding?
    Memory problems?
  • Control groups normal downs Where did Sally
    put the marble in the beginning? Where is the
    marble now?

7
4. Seeing leads to knowing
  • Where does knowledge come from, and who knows
    what, and who doesnt know what
  • 3 year olds grasp principle
  • Baron-Cohen Goodhart (1994) autism at chance
    level only

8
5. Production of range of mental state words
  • CWA produce fewer mental state words in their
    spontaneous description of picture stories (e.g.,
    Baron-Cohen et al., 1986)

9
6. Spontaneous pretend play
  • Lower frequency amongst cwa (e.g., Lewis
    Boucher, 1988)

10
7. Understanding how belief causes emotion
  • Emotions can be caused by situation (falling over
    and crying)
  • But can also be caused by mental states (desires
    and beliefs)
  • CWA with vma of 3 have difficulty with mental
    states as causes of emotion (Baron-Cohen, 1991)

11
8. Mentalistic interpretation of gaze
  • Baron-Cohen et al. (1995)
  • Which one is Charlie going to take?
  • What is Charlie looking at?

12
9. Physical sabotage and mental deception
  • Sodian Frith (1994)

13
10. Figurative speech
  • Baron-Cohen (1997)
  • Metaphor, sarcasm, jokes

14
11. Pragmatics
  • Sensitivity to speaker and listener mental states

Bleed
Yes
15
12. Imagination
  • Draw a pretend looking person (e.g., a person
    with two heads).

16
Components of a Theory of Mind
ID Desires Goals "Mary wants the apple"
EDD Eyes can see things "Mary sees the apple"
SAM Infers desires goals based on eye
direction "I see that Mary wants the apple"
TOMM Allows the full range of mental states "I
think Mary will take and eat the apple after
seeing it"
17
Mind-blindness or executive dysfunction?
  • Mechanism which enables the normal person to
    shift attention flexibly, inhibit stereotypical
    responses, generate goal directed behaviour and
    solve problems in a planful manner
  • ToM correlates with tests of executive
    functioning (e.g., Tower of Hanoi)

18
Problems with a strong EFT account
  • Executive dysfunction occurs in a large number of
    other clinical disorders (e.g., schizophrenia,
    OCD, Tourettes, anxiety disorder, ADHD
  • A narrower executive dysfunction? in autism
    there is a deficit in disengaging from the
    salience of reality
  • But in a number of tests where cwa have to
    disengage from reality, the pass!
  • Leslies False photograph test

19
So what of ToM?
  • ToM is not reducible to executive function
  • EFT deficits may co-occur with mind-blindness
    because both share same brain origins (frontal
    lobes)
  • Two cognitive deficits may be separately
    responsible for different types of behaviours in
    autism
  • But EFT researchers point to modified false photo
    test with strong EFT demands (see Russell,
    Saltmarsh, Hill, 1999)
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