Theory of mind

• Theory of mind = our personal understanding of what other people are thinking and feeling - sometimes referred to as 'mind-reading'
• Intentional reasoning in toddlers:

  Meltzoff provided convincing evidence to show that toddlers have an understanding of adult intentions when carrying out simple actions.
• Meltzoff:

  children of 18 months observed adults place beads into a jar. In the experimental condition the adults appeared to struggle with this and some beads fell outside the jar. In the control condition the adults placed the beads successfully in the jar. In both conditions the toddlers did successfully place the beads in the jar, they dropped no more beads in the experimental condition. This suggests they were imitating what the adult intended to do rather than what they actually did. This suggests very young children have a simple ToM.
• False belief tasks were developed in order to test whether children can understand that people can believe something that is not true.
• Wimmer and Perner told 3-4 year-olds a story in which Maxi left his chocolate in a blue cupboard in the kitchen and then went to the playground. Later, Maxi's mother used some of the chocolate in her cooking and placed the remainder in the green cupboard. Children were asked where Maxi would look for his chocolate. Most 3-year-olds incorrectly said that he would look in the green cupboard because they are assuming that Maxi knows what they know. However, most 4-year-olds correctly identified the blue cupboard. This suggests ToM undergoes a shift and becomes more advanced at 4 years of age.
• Baron-Cohen et al. told children a story involving two dolls (Sally and Anne). Sally places a marble in her basket, but when Sally is not looking Anne moves the marble to her box. The task was to work out where Sally will look for her marble. Understanding that Sally does not know that Anne has moved the marble requires an understanding of Sally's false belief about where it is.
• Baron-Cohen et al. have explored links between ToM deficits and autism using false belief tasks. The Sally-Anne task was given individually to 20 autistic children, 27 non-autistic children and 14 children with Down syndrome. 85% of children in the control groups correctly identified where Sally would look. However, only 4 of the autistic children (20%) were able to answer this. Baron-Cohen et al. argued that this difference showed that autism involves a ToM deficit and that this may be a complete explanation for autism.
• Studies of older autistic children and adults without a learning disability showed that this group could succeed on false belief tasks. This was a blow to the idea that autism can be explained by ToM deficits. However, Baron-Cohen et al. developed a more challenging task to assess ToM in adolescents and adults (The Eyes Task).
• The Eyes Task involves reading complex emotions in pictures of faces just showing a small area around the eyes. Baron-Cohen et al. found that many autistic adults without a learning disability struggled with the Eyes Task. This supports the idea that ToM deficits might be a cause of autism.
• One limitation of ToM research has been the reliance on false belief tasks to test the theory. Hundreds of studies have made use of false belief tasks like the Sally-Anne task, however, false belief tasks may have serious problems of validity. False belief tasks require other cognitive abilities such as visual memory - failure on a false belief task may thus be due to a deficit in memory rather than ToM. Also, some children who can engage in pretend play which requires some ToM ability, nonetheless find false belief tasks difficult. This means false belief tasks may not really measure ToM.
• Another limitation is that research techniques fail to distinguish ToM from perspective-taking. Perspective-taking and ToM are related but are actually different cognitive abilities. It can be difficult to be sure we are measuring one and not the other. For example, in intentional reasoning tasks a child might be visualising the beads task from the adult perspective rather than expressing a conscious understanding of their intention. In the Sally-Anne task a child might be switching perspective between Sally and Anne. This means that these tasks may actually be measuring perspective-taking.
• A strength of ToM research is its application to understanding autism. The tasks used to assess ToM are challenging for some autistic people, possibly because they may not fully understand what other people are thinking. This in turn offers an explanation for why some autistic people may find social interaction difficult - it is hard to interact with someone if you don't get a sense of what they are thinking and feeling. In contrast, it is often assumed that most neurotypical people can 'pick up' another person's thoughts and feelings with little effort.
• Nevertheless ToM does not provide a complete explanation for autism. Not every autistic person experiences ToM issues nor are ToM problems limited to autistic people. Also a lack of ToM cannot explain the cognitive strengths of autistic people. This means that there must be other factors that are involved in autism, and the association between autism and ToM is not as strong as first believed.