Are you aware of your lacking Theory of Mind?

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You really clarified it, thank you.
This is a bit off-topic, but I've read that if NTs saw/read descriptions of life-experiences of people they were prejudiced against they got less prejudiced, showing that at least prejudiced NTs must be lacking (or unwilling to deploy) emotional imagination.
But from what I've experienced autistics are much less likely to be prejudiced than NTs, so there must be some other factor there.

Same here with ToM in childhood, and it took a while realizing that it even existed.
Maybe one of the reasons it is innate is because so many things are automatic processing for NTs while autistics use controlled processing by default?
Then we have the option to opt out if it is too boring, and more people should.
I think it's so exciting you actually work with stuff like this!

I'm kind of tired, so I'm unfocused even though I find this very fascinating, lots more I could write.

Most of what is studied in neuroscience is NT cognition, so I want to formulate models of autistic cognition. I've only been working in this area for two months, and I realized that even more things are different between NTs and autistics than I thought.

That is excellent! It's exactly what we need.
I'm relatively new to this, though not a professional.

I found this right now:
http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/12329_Chapter4.pdf
I have not read all of it yet, but it describes how automatic and controlled processing works concerning non-verbal communication (in NTs, I guess):

I am very tired and hope this is coherent but want to post a reply to this. I actually consider myself as having a pretty good Theory of Mind. I find most people really predictable. However, this does not mean that I can naturally follow their patterns; I just observe and know what people are doing, in theory. When I work or interact with other people on the spectrum, though, I find that my Theory of Mind becomes less theoretical and more instinctual. I can get into an emotional rhythm with a non-verbal autistic person. I think what I truly lack is not a ToM, it is a lack of understanding of social norms or that "collective conscious", otherwise known as "common sense". I can emotionally connect and read body language when there isn't too much else to process. I can emotionally reciprocate only when raw emotion is exchanged with no symbols/words. Words are unnatural and forced a lot of the time in conversation. More direct perceptual cues take over my mind, so I cannot process symbols anymore when that happens. Social norms/cues are symbolic and even more vague/less direct than language, so I don't process them pretty much at all.

I find the people with the best empathy tend to be people I would consider "mild" or sub-clinical BAP. Since they are somewhere between AS and NT they can relate to both sides. Some of it is a personality trait though. There is a willingness component to empathy as well as an ability component.

So they act like translators?
I think the people that are best at empathy are those educated in how people work, but of course that is different than innate ability.

btbnnyr, what are some of the differences that surprised you? Sorry, I miss conversation cues when tired - and ToM, so that means both that it's a conscious effort for me and that it's time for a nap

Attention and vision are two big areas of difference between my performance on non-social tasks that are difficult to understand using standard cognitive models.

Imagine: You see someone in a room. He is opening drawers and turning over the contents. He bends down and peers under the cabinet. He pulls the cabinet out from the wall and looks behind it.

What is he doing?

He's lost something and is looking for it. ToM enables YOU to imagine what HE is thinking.

Someone lacking ToM would not make the connection between the apparent search and that the person has lost something and is looking for it. What the person is doing, is a meaningless, pointless act. It wouldn't necessarily be thought of as a search.

If my cat has done something I don't like, and as soon as it does it, I remove its food dish, it won't comprehend that as punishment. It cannot attribute a mental state to ME. That is lack of ToM.

Well put StereoLake.

Seeing the details, you only see a person opening drawers and turning over the contents, bending down and peering under the cabinet, pulling the cabinet out from the wall and looking behind it.

Seeing the big picture (with a ToM), you see a person who is likely searching for something that has been lost.

Without a ToM you cannot make sense of the world, because a huge part of making sense of the world is making sense of people (including yourself).

ToM = empathy. Also described as the ability to read non-verbal cues, which should be called something else.
I know my motivations and cues perfectly fine without any education.
Empathy has nothing to do with executive functioning, the only connection is probably that it's a controlled process for us which has some implications on how we work.

EDIT now that I've slept and thinking a little better:
Lacking empathy in the above example would be not ascribing thoughts or feelings to the person doing the searching (/whatever activity).

Last edited by Anomiel on 31 May 2013, 8:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting about the global perception. If I saw someone doing the thing with the drawers, I would probably have to ask what they're doing because there can be multiple possibilities. Sometimes, when I work with an individual (verbal), I know I can read his motivations, eg. with something he wants, because I ask him a question to confirm my suspicion and he gives a positive response. I think when I can draw upon my instincts more, my ToM improves; it probably has to do with enormous self-awareness, as well.

Other times, I can reason through what people might have been thinking, but I can only do it logically (not emotionally/intuitively) in retrospect of the situation. In fact, this happens a lot, even at work sometimes. I try to draw upon that and learn, but it's hard to generalize knowledge from a unique situation.

I don't think the above means lack of ToM. I think it means sensory processing impairment/difference, but a good fundamental understanding of other people's minds.

As for empathy, what does the ability to mirror emotions in other people, i.e. becoming sad when seeing someone else being sad, mean? Isn't that empathy? I am hypersensitive to people's emotions, but only when I feel them directly. If I can't detect, I can't feel. A behaviour may be too indirect for me to be able to detect, so I can't empathize.

Lacking ToM doesn't mean you don't have an opinion. After all, NT 3 year olds have opinions. (Even babies have opinions, in my opinion.) It means not being able to understand how opinions form. For example, if you believe that Smarties box contains crayons instead of Smarties, what made you think that way? (Looking in the Smarties box.) Did you believe something else before you looked inside the Smarties box? (You thought there were Smarties inside.) That's the kind of cognitive process that theory of mind entails - understanding how and why beliefs come about, and how they can be inaccurate.



What is it about you and survival, qawer? Seriously, you're not going to understand AS until you let go of this obsession with the desire to survive. AS has nothing to do with the desire to survive.



People infer what is probably inside another person's mind, based on the context. For example, if you know that Smarties boxes usually contain Smarties, and that you thought this particular Smarties box contained Smarties, but then discovered that it actually contains crayons, then it's reasonable to assume that Jimmy, who has never seen this Smarties box before but has probably seen many other Smarties boxes in the past, will assume the Smarties box contains Smarties.

Or to put it pseudo-mathematically:

Smarties boxes --> usually Smarties inside

This Smarties box --> crayons instead of Smarties

Jimmy --> has never seen this Smarties box, but has seen other Smarties boxes

Jimmy --> believes this Smarties box contains Smarties



My cat does not have Theory of Mind. He doesn't even have Stage 4 object permanence. But he does have a constant intuitive awareness of how to maximize his chances for survival.

Heck, even earthworms intuitively know what they need to do to survive.



That's only one executive function. There are others, and many autistics are impaired in the other EFs instead of that particular one.

In my case, I know I have a mind, and I know what it's doing. But I don't have nearly as much control over it as most people seem to expect. I have no idea how most people manage prospective memory (remembering to remember), for example. In my case, when thoughts come to mind, it's due to internal or external cues. I don't have uncued thoughts coming to mind when I need them to come to mind.

Also, I have motivation issues, basically due to having no control over my own motivational power. I can't summon up motivation whenever I want. It's like I'm a bird that has trouble flapping but is extremely good at gliding, and in order to get somewhere, I need to ride the thermals. I can't summon up a thermal at will, all I can do is figure out where the thermals are and when.



Regarding weak central coherence, Dawson and Mottron have proven that autistics do not have that particular issue. (Although some NLDers might.) Block Design peak requires strong central coherence as well as good detail perception. Autistics tend to have enhanced perception of details along with normal perception of the gestalt.

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/129/7/1789.full

There is a condition that does cause weak central coherence, though it's usually not described that way. A rare chromosome disorder known as Williams Syndrome. People with this condition, if asked to copy an H made out of tiny Xs, will draw tiny Xs in no particular pattern. They draw 'exploded' pictures - all the right pieces, but scattered all over the place. They also really suck at the Block Design task.

There is controversy about their theory of mind performance, but in general, it appears to be on par with their IQ. (Which is usually around 50, by the way. But their picture-drawing and figure copying and Block Design are all poorer than IQ-matched controls.) Certainly, it's clear that WS people have better ToM than central coherence.



In fact, the research literature has found a double dissociation between the two.

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/124/2/287.full

BM, a guy with early left amygdala damage, has only first-order theory of mind as an adult (equivalent to an NT 4 year old). However, an extensive study of his executive functions found absolutely no evidence of any difficulty in any executive functions. So not only can you have executive dysfunction without theory of mind delays, you can also have theory of mind delays without executive dysfunction.

"People infer what is probably inside another person's mind, based on the context."

So they're guessing. I figured as much.

But what if they're educated in how people say people think rather than in how people really think? If people who study psychology have such great theory of mind why did a lot of them in the past accept Freudian theories that are half truth and half crap?