Feel embarrassed that we fail Sallyanne test

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I wish I had just ripped the head off the Sallyanne dolls and said "there, how's that for an answer?" I bet that would have scared the psychiatrist to death.

Bloody diagnosing me with sh***y autism and thinking I "can't read body language" and "can't put myself in other people's shoes" when actually I can.

They can shove their stupid tests where the sun don't shine.

They were sooooooo very wrong. Those mistaken concepts are changing, but slowly. I try to do my small part... Having a bit of agency in the matter clears out a bit of overwhelm (helplessness).

Most people here have a higher IQ than me. But I don't care about intellectual skills, I care more about social skills. I don't want to be an intelligent nerd who doesn't have any friends. I hate when people call me intelligent, unless they mean social or emotional intelligence.

Don't be so hard on yourselves. We are valid human beings regardless of our skills. I had an IQ test back in October and apparently I'm above average in verbal and average in non-verbal intelligence. I'm poor at empathy.

Often when someone looks at me, they may think that I'm intelectually disabled because of hardships in grasping social constructs and what not. But I just don't care. I failed Sallyanne test the first time, but now I kind of use my general understanting rather than looking into somebody's point of view.

I want to live my life as happy and fulfilled as I can, and other's trashy opinions, or my own inner critic won't stop me.

I think this is a great response. Also, these tests are made by human beings and will necessarily reflect their values on some level. So, the people designing them will expect others to live up to their standards. The tests aren't designed by God, so we probably shouldn't take them too seriously.

I had never heard of the Sally-Anne test, so I looked it up and took it. .... Dang it, I am a college professor. I got nearly a perfect score on the math section of the GRE, but I failed this stupid thing.
I think my problem was that the example was poorly worded though. I didn't understand the question. I assumed that when they said "Where does Sally look for the marble?" it meant that Sally was looking because she had already established that it was "lost" (i.e. not in her basket). Not my fault!

Link?

/Mats

There is an image of it here. You can look at it and write down your answer first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sally-Anne_test.jpg#/media/File:Sally-Anne_test.jpg

Information on how to interpret the results can be found in the "Outcomes" section of the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test

That's funny. I failed a test that is made for a little kid.

Valid point. The wording "look for" seems to imply that Sally needs to look for the marble because she couldn't find it in her basket.

If 80% of NT kids pass the Sallyanne test, why don't the remaining 20% pass it?

This test is imperfect for determining autism. It's getting close to the point where it will be pretty much debunked as an assessment of "theory of mind."

I read somewhere that people with depression or schizophrenia can lack theory of mind. So autism isn't the only group that can lack theory of mind.

You have plenty of supposedly "normal" people who seem (to me) to lack theory of mind.

I think the Sallyanne test is archaic and that it should be done away with. I can't believe that psychologists are still using that antiquated test.

Joe, NTs lack theory of mind also. It's a matter of "guessing" what another person thinks. Like-minded people or folks with similar experience can guess better for each other. I read that Sally-Anne is less about theory of mind and more about "false-belief tasks".

Another concern for S-A test: "When a child took a long time to answer or gave an unclear or quiet answer, the tester repeated the question. Repetition of a question is often perceived as a social cue that the answer given was inadequate. In both cases, the child changes their response when this happened." The proposal is that it's a matter of communication between researcher and test-taker.

S-A was in the 80s, right? Oh, God, we had better have come further along than that.

A depressed person has great theory of mind relative to another depressed person (e.g. compassion). Believe me, when I was going through all my pregnancy losses, I can say for sure that my "theory of mind" and most everyone else's were mismatched b/c we were having very different experiences. In fact, I would say my theory of mind was better: I could imagine how the newly easily pregnant person felt, thought --- but most of them had no clue whatsoever how I felt/thought. Luckily my Autistic BFF read a book about pregnancy loss to better support and relate to me. My NT family and friends didn't have the TOM to do this. However, when I joined a pregnancy loss support group all of a sudden our mutual theory of mind was "stronger" than ever -within the shared experience. TOM theories - phooey.