Theory of Mind for Dummies?

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I keep on getting told that I don't have theory of mind, and to get it.
Well, that's all well and good, but no one will tell me how. Is there a book? I don't have pots of money, and would borrow it from a library or read free articles, not go on expensive courses.
Thank you.

who the heck is telling you to "get" theory of mind? like it's something you can pick up at the grocery or something?

I'd think if it's something that could be picked up that easily it would be incorporated into behavioral therapies already, and since I know those are damned hard work I'm pretty sure it's not as simple as whoever is making such a ridiculous statement implies when they tell you to go "get" theory of mind.

sorry, but it strikes me as idiotic (although if there was a book "theory of mind for dummies" it's probably something everyone should read, including the idiot who told you to go get ToM.... although isn't the whole ToM model under debate anyway?)

I'm curious about theory of mind, because I'm sure I have it, except for when I assume someone is going to be fascinated with same things I am. It seems only logical that someone would know that another person might have a different political view for instance. Maybe I'm not sure what is really meant by this. If someone had absolutely no theory of mind, then they would not look when you pointed to something.That is something I would associate with babies and animals or someone completely disconnected. When we talk about TofM, we are talking about social blindness that looks like self absorption aren't we?

Okay, that's a good example. I guess sometimes I see it and sometimes I don't. I see it better when I'm observing and less when I'm directly involved.

I'm so glad you understood. It's actually a bit of a relief to find someone who does!

I also agree with you about it being easier when not directly involved. My wonderfully patient friend uses examples involving other people, especially when she's clarifying things to me in the middle of me having a meltdown. I think it's because my instincts to defend a position are lessened when looking at an example that doesn't involve me, it makes it easier for me to move my mindset out of the corner I am defending, and move with her to examine the example she's demonstrating to me. I wish I'd met her decades ago.

Here's an example test for theory of mind that was used when was son was diagnosed at age 10 about a year ago.

The specialist had two bears, one had a jelly bean and she put it under a cup and then left the room. While the first bear was gone the second bear took the bean from under the cup and hid it under the pillow. Then the first bear returns and the specialist asks my son where she will look for the jelly bean. His answer was under the pillow. The test was repeated a few other times with variations on the same theme and always he answered where the bean was and not where the first bear would assume that the bean was.

Now son is very intelligent and it blew my mind seeing him get this thing wrong (especially given his diagnosis was ultimately leading to my own diagnosis).

And he certainly wont make that mistake again - but he'll be overcoming it by intellectual means, not by the same intuitive natural way and NT would.

You can simplify theory of mind as the ability to put yourself in someone else shoes (empathy). It is easy to think that you can do this when you are actually using your intellect to simulate that ability. I've been closely and critically watching my own 'empathy' since I became aware of my aspergers and am confident that I do not have theory of mind - it is a purely intellectual construct in my case.

Whereas a bit over a year ago I would have thought anyone crazy to suggest I didn't have empathy.

In terms of you being told to "get it" - you're never going to be able to over and above how you are now - what you can do is learn to improve your intellectual substitute.

FeralAspie,
That's exactly what my friend says, that because I have the mental capacity to do so, I can develop an intellectual substitute.

However, I'd love some exercises to work through. I get the jelly bean one, but do any adult level exercises exist? Because I'm durned if I would have ever figured out why those SILs earnestly discussing WHY my MIL acted the way she did were actually just enjoying the bitching, especially when they were so upset by it. I honestly thought that they were just a little slow. Doh. Guess who's the slow one. Egg on my face or what. Lol.

Yes, I see your son took a variation of the Sally/Ann test. It would surprise me for a 10 year old not to get the correct answer as well. I wonder if kids are so eager to show the tester that they know where the jelly bean is they don't pay attention to how the question is phrased. I'd have to see a video and see if the tester emphasized the question clearly. But you wouldn't expect a 25 year old man not to get the answer, would you? And he might still be described as lacking theory of mind. I don't know how to tell if I know something intuitively or intellectually. I guess If I have to consciously go through the process of putting myself in someone else's shoes, it's not so intuitive is it?

I think the fact my 10 year old got it wrong surprised the specialist as well. To that end they tried it again and again with very careful emphasis. In my mind there could be no doubt as to the phrasing of the questions and I was trying to look at it at all angles myself and I have no doubt the test was done very clearly for my son to follow.

Aimless, your point about kids being eager to answer is valid - but I think this is a strong part about testing kids. You get their immediate instinctive response which is more valid as to how they really are. I reckon if my son had been asked the question but told to think about it carefully with the implication it was some sort of a trick question I think he probably would have got it right because then it becomes a logical problem that he would excel at. For the record he displayed high intelligence in the other tests it was just this one that he kept getting wrong. From my point of view I'm very glad he got it wrong because it gave me an insight into this whole thing.

SilentScream, unfortunately I'm not aware of any exercises to do although there may be some out there. I think it comes down to studying human behavior. Luckily for me anthropology has been one of my obsessions so I think I have learned a fair bit that way. But we're all different and I think the main thing to recognize is that you have a deficiency in this area - that knowledge alone can help avoid a lot of social blunders because you can learn to accept that maybe your take on the situation is not the same as an NT's take. So maybe you hold back at times where otherwise you'd have been more outspoken. Of course that amounts to self-censorship which is not necessarily a good thing either - its a very messy balance. It's a lifelong process, the only real positive being that you can only improve. So - your awareness of your deficiency is the key - it'll mean you're likely to learn more from NTs. Your friend is wrong to think this is something you can learn like any other subject.

The downside to intellectualizing processes that are more natural for NTs is that it is very taxing and exhausting. In my case I feel that my mind has to run at hyper-speed in order to come up with poor substitutes for what comes naturally to NTs. I'm finding that as the years roll on I have less and less energy for it and tend to withdraw more to simply avoid the unnecessary stress of it all.

Oh I have a theory of mind all right. I can pass that Sally Ann test in flying colors. But I lack TOM sometimes but doesn't everyone. I still expect people to think like me sometimes and have the same thoughts as me, then I think they're weird for thinking different and I don't understand why they are thinking that way.

I am always analyzing peoples feelings and thoughts and talking about their actions and why they acted this way and asking about it so I can get ideas. However if I were to be tested and I was handed a picture and told the situation those people are in and then got told to imagine how the people are feeling in the photo, I'm stumped. I would have to think and I might be making guesses and then I get all these "whys" from the doctor and it's irritating. I might start saying "I don't know" and getting irritated that I am being forced to think. They be expecting me to know on my own than helping me because they are seeing how well I am with the empathy or theory of mind or how much I struggle with it. But me being forced to do this makes it even harder and I hate it. I find the picture so unimportant because it's not real and it didn't happen. Sure it might have really happened but it's not my concern, I wasn't there, I didn't cause it so why care?
That's why I don't take empathy tests seriously or emotional intelligence tests. I see them as inaccurate. Okay just because the test says I lack empathy doesn't mean I lack it. Just because the other test said my emotional intelligence is low doesn't mean I am that low.

I think i have a good intellectual theory of mind(as FeralAspie put it).. It's just logical that since i have my own view of things that another person is going to have their own view aswell. I'm pretty sure that i don't have much "natural" theory of mind, though.. Because the whole idea of just instinctively understanding someone else's viewpoint, without thinking it through to reach those conclusions, doesn't really make much sense to me. But it does make tons of sense that other people are picking up on something that i'm missing, because most people seem kind of like psychics to me sometimes.

I've been thinking a lot about Theory of Mind a lot and the claim that people with autism/aspergers syndrome don't have it. The more I look at it, the more it seems that all humans have a Theory of Mind but there are varying degrees of accuracy of this Theory of Mind and the wiring of autism/aspergers skews towards lower accuracy, depending on how well the person thinks their way around it.

Theory of Mind is really just our own personal theories about how other peoples' minds work. We use our theory to predict other peoples' behaviour, responses and emotions. People whose Theory of Mind is innacurate frequently will seem to others (diagnosticians) to have no Theory of Mind but I think it's actually a Theory of Mind that makes innaccurate predictions about others more often than not. People with a very high degree of accuracy in predicting others can look like they have a Theory of Mind that approaches telepathy. But there isn't really any such thing as telepathy. There is only a Theory of Mind which is able to predict the behaviour and feelings of others with a high degree of accuracy.

There are two ways that people develop Theory of Mind (again, this is my guess based on reading and observation- I'm not quoting a research paper so could be quite wrong). There is the observation of others which starts in infancy. Sometimes babies later diagnosed with autism seem more interested in things than in the people around them. Less observation of others over the course of a lifetime will result in less accurate predictions of the behaviour and feelings of others. Some people are motivated to try to fill in those gaps later in life with dedicated observation. These observations will result in good predictions and a Theory of Mind that can be quite accurate, but will always feel intellectual rather than gut-level. The things that you learn as an adult or even as an older child will always feel more intellectual than the things you learn in infancy that actually change your neural wiring. I've read that it is actually mirror neurons that predispose infants to this study of others and the infant ability to mimic others as seen in baby's first smile. It turns into a feedback loop that strengthens those neural connections. The mirror neurons let the baby do this instinctively. The practice in doing this that starts shortly after birth results in being able to do it so quickly that happens unsconsciously whereas the autistic person has to do it consciously and starts the practice later in life- at a time in their life when they make a conscious decision to do so.

There is also the ability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes in order to map your own experiences on to what you think they will experience. You think "if I were that guy, what would I do? What would I think?" That's what the Sally/Ann, bear/jellybean test is testing for. On the one hand, you map your own experiences onto another person (or bear). On the other hand, you have to step outside of yourself just a bit and see the world from somebody else's POV. This seems to not come naturally to those wired a certain way but it can be learned. But it's like the observation of others that starts in infancy. If it doesn't come naturally via wiring, you can still learn it but it will feel more intellectual and less gut-level.

So I think everybody has Theory of Mind, but some people's Theory of Mind will be more accurate than others. Are there exercises that can increase the accuracyy of your Theory of Mind? Other posters have said no but I'm going to say yes. I think studying acting and writing character-driven fiction are exercises that would strengthen the accuracy of Theory of Mind. Both of those things require you to step out of your own responses to situations and attempt to re-create what other people with minds totally unlike your own would do, say or feel. Studying the behaviour of other people anthropologically will give you information about the behaviour and reactions of others but I think it will remain very surface because you don't make an attempt to really get inside the head of another. But if you study acting or write character-based fiction, you force yourself to imagine what it would be like to actually think with a different brain than the one you have. This is bound to increase the accuracy of your Theory of Mind.

Thank you everybody. Quite a bit of food for thought there.

Out of curiosity, how many of you would have understood or not understood that the SILs were actually content to keep on bitching, and not actually stand up to the MIL?