Theory of Mind/Sally-Anne Effect.....

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I have a friend who told me this story.....

They had a rat that they found dead in the front of their yard. They threw this rat away in the garbage bin. The garbage bin gets emptied once a week in front of the house. The Rat was thrown in this bin months ago.

The other day (months after the bin was emptied with the rat inside) her child (8 yrs old, extremely smart ran to the garbage bin thinking he will see the rat.)

This guy has some red flags for autism.

She thought this was weird since he's so smart. She asked me, would this be something that would sound like theory of mind or the Sally-Anne affect? I said I don't know I will ask you guys.

Thanks

Lainie

In sum, likely yes. Here's why: Patterned behavior; he cannot know, by prediction, why the rat is not there since it was before. I have versions of this same sort of dilemma - often. I can 'see' his way of thinking.

ToM (in sum): "If I know something, then why don't you?"

implies ----- If it was present then, then it is now. By parallel. Patterned thought. For me, I know by choreographed cues and mimicry - same thing in your story related. An animal would do the same, btw. Animals have no ToM, by definition.

LabPet thank you for your thoughts...
This is important. He also has Severe Tourette Syndrome.....
Lainie

I had a sally-anne effect today.

I was looking for my cat, Couldnt find him. I was tromping around in the snow and I had the thought that perhaps someone let him into the shed and he was trapped there. Despite the fact that there was no one else at home and the gate was blocked shut by snow, and there were no cat tracks around(though kitty could have followed my tracks from the previous day to the shed ). It wasnt until i yanked on the door and realized it was iced shut that I felt like a fool for even thinking that.

Its a little different but I couldnt be sure until I had seen with my own eyes. The fact that it was frozen shut did the trick too. But I immediately thought "sally-anne"..

Ummmm... dumb question....

What is the sally-anne effect?

Helen

It's named after a scene that is played with puppets. A child watches the role play (or gets told the story). The two puppets hide something together in a red box for example and then one of them leaves the scene. In the meanwhile, the other puppet decided to change the hiding place in secret and puts the thing in a green box.
The other puppet will then come back and says it wants to take the thing out of its hiding place. Then the child watching the scene is asked where they think this puppet will look for the thing. If the child answers: the red box of course, since that's where the puppet thinks it is, although it isn't, then it has a TOM. Because it knows that the puppet couldn't have known what happened in its absence. If the child answers that the puppet will of course look into the green box, then they have no TOM (yet).

Uh, I suppose you call the puppets sally and anne or one is called sally-anne. Never thought about it, but it makes sense to give them names.

I hope my explanation is understandable? I have trouble with making people understand me today, might as well be because I'm feeling sick.

And the test has been criticised as deeply flawed in ways.

What would be an example of ToM difficulties in an adult, since presumably ToM difficulties still exist? Some of the articles I have read suggest that an adult acquires an explicit ToM. I find it rather confusing as I am not entirely sure what it means.

Would this hypothetical situation be an example of ToM difficulty?

An individual has a jacket which they normally keep in the cupboard, one day the individual goes to the cupboard expecting to find the jacket but it isn't there. When they ask someone else if they know where it is since it is not in the place they presumed it would be, the other individual states that they left the article of clothing at their house some months ago.

ToM can be developed logically and with experience. Therefore its not likely the same in adults as with kids.

I think the puppet experiment is seriously flawed. Playing / make-belief was difficult for me when I was young, I think I would have screwed it up (especially since puppets were intended for girls...)

A play with two adults watched by the child would be much more real and would prove more. Or a video?

There are different versions of this test, perhaps this one is more amenable to a real-life situation:



Mini Theory of Mind “test” for you (just so you understand better): This is not meant to be tricky! Just answer straightforwardly – first response that comes to mind. It’s very simple.

Sally and her friend, Anne, are playing with a marble. Sally has a basket and Anne has a bowl. Sally puts the marble in her basket and leaves the room for a moment. When Sally returns, where is her marble?


<SCROLL DOWN FOR ANSWER - DO NOT PEEK>







The neurotypical “correct” response: “Sally’s marble is in her basket, where she left it.”
The autistic response (& my always response): “Fifty-fifty chance; Sally’s marble could be in either her basket or the bowl. She cannot know.”



Profound implications…….I cannot “know” another’s intent: The autistic response is ANALYTICAL whereas the neurotypical expected response is considered holistic, or “human.” I am mindblind. Neurotypical human children instinctively develop Theory of Mind @ ~ age 4.5 – 5 (Simon Baron-Cohen, et al). Animals, even primates, have no Theory of Mind. Please recognize that the autistic response is not necessarily “wrong,” just different. However, many believe the autistic response is wrong, irrational, or (insert label here). This is why autistics are sometimes referred to as “foreign humans;” we assimilate differently (such as social interaction).


In essence, this is why HFA autistics are scientist a priori! For me/us the Scientific Method is built-in. Selective advantage!

If my brother had been watching that "play" as a child, I'm quite certain he would say, "The green box because if his friend switched the hiding place on him, than he probably had done that a lot before, so he would know that the object had probably been hidden elsewhere."

Labpet,
I must say i prefer the autisitc response. So many fightrs and hurt feelings amongst nt's could be prevented if they just looked at the facts, instead of "interpreting" and "infering" what the facts must mean. I'm not sure its the best comparison but it reminds me of a time in high school (9th or 10th grade) when a boy told on me for making fun of him with a picture I was drawing. On my paper, I had drawn a face with a gigantic, oval shaped nose. The boy in front of me happened to have an extremely large nose and he and some of the others felt I was drawing him to insult him. However there was nothing at all to connect my drawing to him, just as there is nothing in itself that tells whether the marble is in the basket or bowl. As for my picture - I was drawing the news reporter puppet from Sesame Street.

Triangular_Trees - yes! You get it!

NTs often insert meaning where it does not exist, whereas the autistic mind simply does not. This difference is a hallmark of ToM. This is (partly) why the autistic mind has difficulty interpreting or 'predicting' emotive behavior in another. We cannot 'guess,' but rely upon 'step-by-step' logic, not intuition. Just a different mind-set. There is an inherent innocence to autistism, regardles of level of functioning. Not gullibiliity, necessarily, but a naivete certainly.

About ToM being 'learned.' Well, not really. If yes, then with caveats for sure! For me, I do lack ToM. I can know ToM vicariously yet not posses it. Sort of like watching a Shakespearan play - I know the plot, theory, theme, learned inuendos, but do I actually understand Romeo and Juliette? I could write a cogent paper about Romeo and Juliette, but otherwise - no. I appreciate the writing, but not know. There is a distinction in that ToM is a developmental step (I was absent that day) that occurs in NTs at ~ 4.5 years old.

An ex: I'm not a parent, but sometimes parents will play peek-a-boo with their baby by playfully covering baby's head with a blanket and say, "Where's baby?" Baby does not know he/she does not exist. In essence, for baby, they are gone since they cannot see parent. Animals do this too. That's ToM at play.

Sally-Anne test is demonstrative of this phenomena which is so simple it is complex, like Atomic Theory. Oh, btw, I DO understand Atomic Theory and it reverbates within me. But I still have no ToM....except for maybe the mimicry of a parrot.

Smelena, your question is not dumb at all! ToM is part of theorectical math too, and quite misunderstood by even well-versed neuro/psych professionals. Kind of interesting, especially given your family dynamics too.

LabPet, I don't want to cause an argument but haven't you just contradicted yourself?

Lainie wrote:

LabPet wrote:


I answered what you term 'the neurotypical response' for I was told that Sally put the marble in the basket and so I presume it should still be there as it is illogical to me to be anywhere else since I do not know whether it has been moved and in fact this is the same response given by the individual in relation to the rat, hence my confusion.

All right, I experienced a real life example today too. In class, when I sit elsewhere than usual and away from people, the urge me to just sit beside them, so that we 'all sit together'. I never figured why they were mad when I told them that I'd rather sit alone. Because that just works better for me. Today someone who experienced the same situation told me about it and we figured out that the people are actually mad, because they think one only moves away from them when one doesn't like them. They see something where there is nothing - but from what I gathered, they'd never ever sit away from someone if they can stand the person, because they'd freak out when they'd sit alone! They need company, they don't choose it, but they need it. Different rules for them.
And much the same way they can't imagine why I'd like to sit alone, I failed to understand why they'd not sit alone through 14 years of schooling.

Ah! Now I understand, thank you Sora.

I think I was having difficulty comprehending how ToM is implicated in day-to-day activities.