Theory of Mind?

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Reading faces doesn't test theory of mind. It tests... reading faces. And specifically, it generally tests reading the faces of nonautistic actors in unnatural situations and presented in unnatural ways.

Regarding those false-belief tasks, they involve some of the most confusing constructs in the English language. They've found that:

1. Children with specific language impairment that puts their language impairment at the same level as autistic children, fail the same kinds of false-belief tasks autistic people fail. Even though people with SLI cannot by definition have autistic social impairments.

2. Autistic children given non-language-based false-belief tasks perform as well or better than nonautistic children.

So... the whole idea seems to me to be one of those popular myths that won't die because nobody is willing to look underneath it and see what's really there.

It also strikes me as very dishonest of some researchers some of the things they do to prove that autistic people who pass those false-belief tasks "really still have impaired theory of mind". They will seemingly do one of two things:

1. Make more and more complicated false-belief tasks that require more and more complex language structures and multitasking and other stuff autistic people are often bad with. Once the autistic person finally is tripped up by these tasks, they say "See! You're impaired in third-order theory of mind after all!"

2. Set autistic people tasks (whether in ridiculously contrived situations that don't resemble real life or not) that involve things autistic people are known to be bad at, such as reading facial expressions of nonautistic people. If autistic people fail these tasks, claim that these tasks are related to theory of mind whether they really are or not. Then claim that this proves autistic people have impaired theory of mind.

This is an issue where many researchers want so desperately to believe their own theories that they twist things in ways that is... besides anti-scientific, it's just... twisted. All to hang onto this idea at all costs. And surprisingly few people question it. (Possibly because research standards in psychiatry are incredibly low.)

I strongly recommend this article that gets into some of what I mentioned. (Lots of autistic people also noticed this independently of the researcher in question btw.):

http://affect.media.mit.edu/Rgrads/Arti ... odules.pdf