THEORY OF MIND EXPLANATION FOR AUTISM
Theory of mind is the ability to know that others may have different beliefs or desires
from our own, and to know what these beliefs are without them having to tell us. For
example, if we see someone whose face looks like the diagram to the right, then most
of us can tell or guess that the person is sad because of something. This is because we
have a theory of mind.
Autistic people lack a theory of mind. Hence, if they saw someone with that face, they would not be
able to tell that the person is sad, and might even think “why has that person got water coming out of
their eyes?”.
Other examples of theory of mind are outlined in the studies below.
verbal age = the normal age at which you’d expect to find the person in question’s verbal, or
speaking skills. For example, a 10-year-old with very poor verbal skills may have a verbal
age of just five or six.
Perner et al. – SMARTIES TUBE TEST
Aim:
To investigate false belief in children.
Method:
A Smartie tube containing a pencil was shown to the child. The child was asked
“What do you think is in this tube?”, and the child would reply “Smarties”
because they didn’t know what was in the tube. The child was then shown the
pencil inside the tube.
The pencil was then put back into the tube, the lid was closed, and the child was
asked “What will your friend think is in the tube?”.
If the child has theory of mind, they will realise that their friend would also think
a pencil was inside.
If the child lacks a theory of mind, they will fail to understand that their friend
might have a different belief to their own, and they will think that their friend
will share their belief that the tube contains a pencil, even though their friend
has not seen what is inside the tube.
Results:
4-year-old normal children mostly answered “Smarties” (correct answer),
although 3-year-old normal children usually answered “pencil”.
However, of the autistic children in the study, only a third of them answered
correctly, and therefore two-thirds of them lacked a theory of mind.
Conclusion: By the age of 4, clinically normal children have developed a theory of mind.
However, autistic children do not seem to develop this ability. Therefore, the
results suggest that autistic children lack a theory of mind.
Evaluation:
Some researchers have suggested that the children had difficulty in understand
what exactly was being asked of them. More recent studies have found that if
children were asked the question before the lid was opened, autistic children as
young as three could succeed on the task.
Baron-Cohen et al – SALLY-ANNE TEST
Aim:
To investigate whether autistic children would understand that someone else
could have a belief that was different from theirs.
Method:
3 groups were tested:
- 20 autistic children aged between 6 and 16 (verbal age: 5½)
- 14 children with Down’s syndrome aged between 6 and 16 (verbal age: 3)
- 27 clinically normal children aged 4½ (verbal age: also 4½)
Each child individually would be shown a scenario involving two dolls, Sally (who
has a box) and Anne (who has a basket). Sally places a marble in the box and
then goes for a walk. In the meantime, Anne takes the marble and puts it into the
basket. Sally then comes back.
After being presented with this scenario, the child is then asked the belief
question: “Where will Sally look for the marble?”.
If the child has a theory of mind, he/she will know that Sally will look for the
marble in the place where she thinks it is (i.e. the box).
If the child lacks a theory of mind, he/she won’t understand that Sally might
have a different belief. Since the child knows the ball is now in the basket,
he/she will believe that Sally will somehow also know this, and will therefore
look in the basket.
The child was also asked three control questions; namely, which doll was which,
where the marble is now that Anne has moved it, and where the marble was
originally. The purpose of these questions was to test the child’s understanding
of the scenario. If the child failed to answer the belief question but could answer
these three questions, it would prove that the child lacks a theory of mind, and
didn’t simply misunderstand the question.
Results:
20% of the autistic children failed to answer the belief question correctly.
The figure was 86% for Down’s syndrome children, and 85% for clinically normal
children. Even though the autistic children had a higher verbal age than the
other two groups, they still mostly failed the belief question, whereas the other
two groups had almost no problem with it.
Conclusion: Looking at the results, the researchers concluded that autistic children lack a
theory of mind.
Evaluation:
It was suggested that because the experiment used dolls and not real people,
the children may have acted differently.
However, this was later shown not to be the case, as Frith and Leslie performed
a similar experiment, but using themselves and a coin. In this case, the autistic
children still thought the researcher would look for the coin in the new hiding
place.
Baron-Cohen et al – COMIC STRIP STORIES
Aim:
To investigate whether autistic children would understand that someone else
could have a belief that was different from theirs.
Method:
Autistic children were shown four pictures, which, when put into the correct
order, would form one of three types of story:
- a mechanical story, which did not involve any people
- a behavioural story, which did not require any understanding of what the
people in the story were thinking
- a mentalistic story –in order to put this story in the correct order, the
child would need to know what the characters in the pictures were
thinking or believing (i.e. the child would need theory of mind).
The children had to put the four images into the correct order.
Results:
The children had no trouble with the mechanical and behavioural stories, as they
didn’t need to have theory of mind in order to understand the story. However,
they performed very poorly on the mentalistic stories.
Conclusion: This adds further evidence to the idea that autistic children lack theory of mind
EVALUATION OF THEORY OF MIND EXPLANATION FOR AUTISM
On one hand, the fact that a few autistic children can succeed on false belief tasks weakens the
argument for theory of mind as an explanation of autism. However, on the other hand, while they may
succeed at first order belief tasks (the understanding that someone else can have a different belief
from your own), they usually fail at second order belief tasks (the understanding that someone else
will understand that a third person has a different belief from their own).
Despite the numerous studies that have been carried out, researchers still don’t know whether theory
of mind is a cause of autism, or a symptom.
Theory of mind can help us explain certain symptoms of autism. Having a lack of theory of mind makes
it difficult to know what others are thinking. This could possible result in a desire for routines (to avoid
being put into such a difficult situation), with everything always being the same, which is a typical
symptom of autism.
Theory of mind can explain certain symptoms of autism, such as impaired social interaction and even
impaired imagination (see above paragraph), but it can’t explain all the symptoms. For example, it
can’t explain why 1 in 10 autistic individuals have special talents, and it can’t explain other symptoms
such as repeating the same sounds over and over again (echolalia).