Notes on the Theory of Mind (ToM)

Impairment of ToM is a key marker of pervasive developmental disorders such

as autism
Autism is sometimes referred to as mind-blindness

The biological, developmental, & psych. mechanisms are still in need of much

research
Eyes are important
Social interaction

Looking is highly salient

o
Attention is currency in social hierarchy for animals and for group
cohesion
o
Eye direction detector (EDD) detects the presence of eye-like stimuli
Present in a large number of species

o
Helps detect + interpret eye direction as an 'agent' seeing oneself or
looking at something else
o
EDD helps generate dyadic representations
Agent-relation-self, agent-relation-Object

Agent^1-relation-Agent^2, Self-relation-Object, etc.

o
Shared Attention Mechanism (SAM)
Recognizes whether Self and another agent are mutually

attending to the same object or event

Permits triadic relationships

o
Eye contact
Shows psychological arousal

Aggressive cue: threatening display in many non-human

primates

Can express dominance

Affiliative cue

Babies/kids who can secure eye contact

Can get attention of their parent

Are more likely to be fed or have other needs

satisfied
o
Direction of Attention
Extension by Perrett and Emery (1994)

General Direction of Attention Detector (DAD)

Eye, head, body, and locomotion detection

Mental Physical Distinction

o
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) compared 3-4 yr olds vs. children w/ autism

with a VMA (verbal mental age) of 4 yrs

First Order False Belief Tasks

o
Inferring one person's mental state
o
Unexpected Contents
o
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?
o
Connection btwn seeing->knowing
Where does knowledge come from?

Who knows what (and who doesn't)?

Autism kids not good at keeping track

Baron-Cohen & Goodhart (1994) found that at this age autistic

children (CWA) are at chance

o
Production of range of mental state words
CWA use more mechanical words to describe all three stories,

fewer mental state words in their spontaneous description (BaronCohen et al., 1986)
o
Spontaneous play
o
Understanding how belief causes emotion
Emotions can be caused by situation (falling over and crying)

Not good at picking up on mental state emotions (desire, beliefs)

o
Mentalistic interpretation of gaze
o
Physical sabotage / mental deception
Sodian & Frith (1994)

Sabotage and deception of "friend" vs. "thief"

Ecological validity - to what extent to your lab results generalize

to the real world?

o
Pragmatics
Sensitivity to speaker and listener mental states

"Can you pass the salt?" -> "Yes" / What do you do if you
cut yourself? -> bleed

Figurative speech
Baron-Cohen 1997 - metaphor, sarcasm, jokes

Components of a Theory of Mind

ID
Desires and goals
"Mary wants the apple"

EDD
Eyes can see things
"Mary sees the apple"

SAM

Infers desires & Goals based on eye

direction

TOMM

Allows the full range of mental states

Mind blindness or executive dysfunction?

o
Mechanism which enables normal person to shift attention flexible,
o
EFT occurs in large number of other clinial disorders beside autism
(schizophrenia, OCD, Tourettes, anxiety disorder, ADHD)
Narrower executive dysfunction? - in autism there is a deficit in

disengaging from the salience of reality

So
o
o
o
o

Problem: in many tests (Leslie's False photograph test), many of

them pass
what of ToM?
ToM is not reducible to executive function
EFT deficits may co-occur w mind blindness
Tow cognitive deficits may be separately responsible for diff types of
behaviors in autism
EFT researchers point to modified false photo with strong EFT demands