Check out this ToM scenario

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Tom and Sam go to the zoo. Sam walks up to the balloon man and asks for a balloon. Sam realizes he forgot to get money and the balloon man says that he will be waiting at the same spot in the zoo.

Sam goes home to get the money while Tom waits at the zoo and after waiting a bit the balloon man tells Tom that business is slow and that he is going to the fairgrounds near by.

The balloon man passes Sam's house on the way to the fairgrounds and they spot each other and the balloonman tells Sam that he will be at the fairgrounds instead. Sam gets the money and heads out to the fairgrounds.

After 10 minutes Tom comes over to Sam's house and Sam's mom says that Sam has gone to get a balloon. Tom runs out looking for Sam before Sam's mom can say anything else.

Q where will Tom look for Sam and why? (Answer below..The justification is important since that precludes fluke answers and guesses)














A -->in the zoo and because (any of the 3 below is a valid response...it HAS to be one of the 3 below)
1>thats where Sam said he'd return/Tom will look in zoo
2>he doesn't know Sam and balloonman have spoken again
3>Tom doesn't know Sam knows that balloon man has moved

B-->at the fairgrounds

that was my first answer...
...but hey, I even failed the Sally-Anne test

I was recently in a very large hospital for five days. I went into that hospital alone via ambulance and its ER at night. Neither my wife nor I had ever before been to that hospital.

Just prior to being discharged, I phoned my wife and told her I would be waiting for her to pick me up at "Admitting" ... and I said that to her while assuming an "Admitting" sign could be found hanging over one of that hospital's main exterior doors.

The nurse that wheeled me away from my room dropped me off at that hospital's only door with an "Admitting" sign, and that door was on the inside of the hospital and a long way away from any major entrance or exit. There was an exterior door nearby, however, so that is where I went to wait for my wife ... but then it did not take me long to realize there was no "Admitting" sign at that door. So ...

About 30 minutes later, I returned to the "Admitting" sign on the door inside that hospital just a few seconds after my wife had gone into that area looking for me. She had done exactly as I had intended, but in a location far different than I could have ever anticipated.

Well crap.

I got it wrong.

LOL. I didn't think it through carefully and thought since they both knew where the balloon guy was he would go there. I didn't think about it long enough to figure out that Tom didn't know that Sam knew the balloon man had changed venues.

It would be interesting to know how many adults my age, autistic and NT, fail this.

I wonder how much this affects my real life. Since a lot of normal interaction is automatic and I can't carefully parse out details like in this verbal test, I wonder how often I just miss things or completely get them wrong. I wonder if this means I need to be much more deliberate about how I interpret social interactions.

Very curious.

Seeing I've been in more than a few IRL situations like this I got it right. That scenario could be a concise summary of my family's typical mode of communication. Heh.

"I went looking for you there because that's where you said you'd be. How was I suppose to know you'd...." Yadda yadda yadda. This is giving me flashbacks of all the times I've "lost" my mother at the mall or grocery or someplace.

easy

What does it prove when its easy to get it?

The only difficulty I had was to remember the names, so I had to read the text carefully not to mix the names. If you would have used "a green cat and a yellow horse" instead of Tom and Sam, I would have done this test within 30 seconds.

Same here ... and that is why I added my real-life scenario where anticipation, perception and interpretation must also be considered. Navigating our ways through life is about far more than merely dealing with who happens to know what/which facts.

I chose zoo, and I got it right. Although I had to read the story a few times because I kept getting the characters mixed up and stuff.

Makes me wonder if this is really a Theory of Mind issue or more about parsing out a written description. If I had read it a few more times and stepped through it, I would have gotten it right.

What is interesting is that as I work through this visually, I want to go where I know the balloons are. In my 'real world map' the balloons have moved from the zoo to the fair grounds. That is where they now exist so I that's where I think I need to go. For me, it is much easier for me to process things visually and I easily gravitate towards a visual solution. To process what Sam was thinking so that I would go where he should logically be , I have to add another layer to it. I have to compare my map of physical reality (the balloons are at the fair grounds) to what I think Sam's map of physical reality is. So I have to link the words of the scenario to my map (which is "real" since I KNOW the balloons are at the fairgrounds), link the words to an abstract map (Sam's - which is variable) and trace through it step by step to reach the conclusion of what Sam's map SHOULD be. This is far more complex than just looking up the location of the balloons on my map and going there to find Sam.

Confused yet?

why was my answer B?? that makes no sense, indeed he doesn't kow his friend and balloon guy have spoken...AND his friend would look for him at the zoo anyway and get him before going to the fair....oh wow. I didn't know i was in so deep lol...

I liked that. Got it completely wrong, the same as wavefreak. I just assumed that because both Sam and Tom knew where the balloons were, Tom would go there.

I didn't think of any answer because he could have looked anywhere, not just the zoo.
More complex situations like this aren't valid ToM "tests", in my opinion.
The Sally-Anne test was very simple. (But, hey, I failed it.)

My first answer was B, then I read it again, because I knew it was a trick. So I got A. I'm good!

What I have seen is that most NTs don't even need to think about the answer. It is the most obvious thing if they comprehend the scenario. Folks with ADD symptoms might have some difficulty comprehending it.

my first thought was the fairgrounds, both of them knew thats where the balloons were, but neither of them knew that the other one knew where they were.

Read it. Thought it was B.
I than re-read because I knew it was some kind of trick.
"No, it has to be B because he is going to the balloon man and the balloon man said he was going to the fairground."

Yeah... I thought I was only incapable of knowing what other people were thinking. Guess I'm even more special than I thought

My Developmental Psychology class had us watch a clip about children and Theory of Mind. Apparently, kids who are younger than about 8 have a tendency share the same attribute that many people with Asperger's Syndrome have: mind blindness.

This psychologist brings out a juice box for Matthew and asks what Matthew thinks is in the juice box. Matthew says "Juice." The psychologist opens the juice box and pours out a whole bunch of ribbons. He puts the ribbons back in the box and asks Matthew "What do you think Sally will say when I ask her what's in the box?"

"Ribbons."