theory of mind

• theory of mind

  • our personal understanding of what others are thinking and feelings
  • sometimes called mind reading
• autism

  • umbrella term for a wide range of symptoms
  • those with autism may have a deficit of ToM meaning they can't understand the emotions of others
  • explains why autistic people have impairments in empathy, social communication and social imagination
• Baron-Cohen - sally Anne study


  • Children were told a story involving 2 dolls, sally and Anne
  • sally places a marble in her basket and when she isn't looking Anne places the marble in her basket
  • the question asked is where will sally look for the marble?
  • understanding sally downs know Anne moved the marble requires an understanding of sally's false belief about where it is
• sally-anne study results

  • 3 groups were tested one at a time
  • 20 autistic children, 14 with down syndrome (control group 1) and 27 with no diagnosis (control group 2)
  • 85% of kids w/o diagnosis and 86% of down syndromes answered correctly
  • only 20% of autistic answered correctly
• baron-cohen - eye task in adults with Asperger's syndrome

  • identifying emotion displayed by a characters who's eyes can only be seen
  • concluded adults with AS continued to perform poorly on such tasks
  • 16.3/25 got the emotion right whereas adults w/o AS for 20.3/25 right
• eye task limitations

  • low mundane realism: were usually able to look at entire face and facial expressions to access their emotions, verbal cues provide essential info about their feelings
  • low ecological validity: can't generalise findings as ToM deficits can't explain the desirable characteristics AS sufferers have e..g advanced logical. reasoning
  • meaning ToM is limited and not universal explanation for explaining autism