A set of intuitive beliefs we develop about people's experience of the world ('Mind reading')
Having ToM means we understand that others have separate minds and do not necessarily have the same experiences, thoughts and beliefs as us
Key difficulties with Autism
Social interaction and communication
Routine and repetitive behaviours
Sensory issues (over/under sensitive)
Anxiety and mental breakdowns
A common difficulty associated with ASD is issues with social interaction and communication
ToM might explain this because in order to interact with others successfully, it is helpful to be able to understand and 'read' them
Sally-Anne task - False belief
Sally puts her marble in her basket
While Sally is away, Anne moves the marble to her box
When sally returns, where will she look for the marble?
The Sally-Anne study (Baron-Cohen et al 1985)
Baron-Cohen explored the links between ToM deficits and ASD using false belief task
Procedure - 20 high-functioning children diagnosed with ASD and control groups of 27 children without diagnosis and 14 with Down syndrome were individually given the Sally-Anne test
Findings - 85% of children in the control groups identified where Sally would look for her marble, however, only 20% of children with ASD could
This difference demonstrated that ASD involves ToM deficit
Baron-Cohen suggested that deficits in ToM might in fact be a complete explanation for ASD
Context of The Eyes task - Testing older children and adults
Asperger syndrome is a type of ASD characterised by problems with empathy, social communication and imagination, but normal language development
Studies of older children and adults with AS showed that this group succeeded easily on false belief tasks - this was a blow to the idea that ASD can be explained by ToM deficits
Baron-Cohen developed a more challenging task - The Eyes task
The Eyes Task - testing older children and adults
The Eyes task involved reading complex emotions in pictures of faces, just showing a small area around the eyes
Found that adults with AS and those with a diagnosis of high-functioning ASD struggled with the Eyes task
This supports the idea that ToMdeficit might be the cause of ASD
