Can someone explain the Theory of Mind?

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I've seen a few references to it on the forums, but I'm a newb.

Thanks!

it is just a theory, and i will not believe it until there is proof of mind.

to be serious, this is how i understand it.

if your thought processes are similar to most other people's thought processes, then you are likely to be able to predict what they are going to say next.
and when they say what they say next, it is expected, and it serves to confirm the predictions of the listener, who then becomes engaged, because the listener can use their own mind to augment and define what they are listening to.

i have limited "theory of mind" which means i have few similarities in my thought processes with those who i talk to, and i can not guess what they are going to say next, and when they say what they say next, i most often do not understand why they said it. this makes conversation with me very difficult.

"theory of mind" is a "theory" people have (based upon their own experience (which they have found to be similar to other people's experiences (in developmental sequence as well)) as to what other people are thinking.

i am almost blind to how other people think, and so i rarely know what is on their minds, or how they got to where they are in their stage of thought.

i am sure more articulate people can better describe it, but that is basically how i understand it.


edit: i watched the videos (i posted 2 minutes after you and was not aware that you already answered), and they are interesting.

You have a "theory of mind" when you have a "theory" about what what other person is thinking. When you have thoughts style "If I say that, who he will react?" or "Perhaps John is angry with me", you are having "theory of mind".

According to some theories, autistic people don't have ToM, or at least, don't have naturally ToM (with age, they begin to have thoughts like the above, but is a learned reaction, insteado if instictive).

Accordind to other theories, this is only an illusion created by the difficulty of autistics in understanding the language in the tests created to measure ToM.

Controversy. Deconstructing Theory of Mind.

I have read Rachel Rothenberg, a neurodiversity advocate who has ASD (is this how she spells her name?) brilliantly IMHO deconstruct Theory of Mind on her website.

I agreed.

Does anyone know how I might locate this text?

I'm still not sure I understand this. Of course I realize that people think different things than me but that doesn't mean I know what they are thinking about.

I'm trying out this test I found.

http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/daniel.nettl ... nettle.pdf

I am a big fan of Michelle Winner, who works with people with ASD, this is her explanation of 'perspective taking' to help improve communications with NTs. The idea as best I understand it is ASD people do not realize other people have 'thoughts' about them and therefore do not communicate well with NTs.

Also, John Robinson, in his first book, Look Me in the Eye, brilliantly describes what small talk feels like to him, he does not know why people are even talking to him about things, like, 'Susie has a new boyfriend and he has a motorcycle'. He describes his thought process/response to that comment. He mostly thinks about the motorcycle if I remember correctly.

Michelle Winner firmly believes people can be taught how to do perspective taking and communicate better:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

from her website:

"This means that individuals with a ToM impairment would have a hard time seeing things from any other perspective than their own."

I can understand that other people think differently than me but I generally can't figure out what they are thinking unless they tell me.

"Individuals who experience a theory of mind deficit have difficulty determining the intentions of others, lack understanding of how their behavior affects others, and have a difficult time with social reciprocity."

That part applies to me.

Some of those questions in that test I posted I found impossible to answer as their wasn't enough info in the story. Saying what they thought would be a guess that could be right or wrong.

Here's my explanation of ToM, but you should know before reading it that I tend to apply the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) principle to definitions of things like this, and that there are advantages and disadvantages that come with doing so.

One advantage is that it makes it easier to understand, but only if the simplistic definition is actually accurate, which brings in a disadvantage. Simple definitions can often be misread, resulting in others debating my simple definition, which requires further clarification. Finally, if the simplistic definition is based on inaccurate understanding of the term, it looks even more wrong, because it probably is.

This though, is a definition I arrived at after a few years of rewording based on increasingly more accurate understanding, at least within my own mind (which goes to the whole point of Tom).

Theory of Mind is the ability to imagine what other people might be thinking. It is not necessarily the ability to predict others thoughts and/or feelings accurately, however, the more accurate ones imagining is, the more useful it is.

Nobody's ToM ability is 100% accurate, because 100% accuracy is impossible. It is impossible because while you might accurate imagine someone else's thoughts, and they may validate what you think about what they think, there is always the possibility that people's ability to be dishonest with themselves could be at play.

For example, I might think my friend, Fred, doesn't like Republican platform ideals. He might agree and say he doesn't like them. But what if Fred is the kind of person that tends to agree with the majority of people around him, and simply can't or won't publicly admit that he has his own opinion about anything. Suppose he tends to "go with the flow," and most of his friends and family don't agree with Republican ideals, and that is the only reason he says, "Yeah, I don't like them either."

Suppose, if Fred were left alone to form his own opinion, he WOULD agree with Republican ideals, but he just can't or won't admit it?

It's ambiguous situations like this than can and do happen very often, that I say that accuracy of ToM has nothing to do with whether or not one possesses ToM.

What does matter is whether or not one actually DOES exercise imagination of what other people think and feel.

For me, lack of ToM was apparent in the fact that for many years, I would be shocked that anyone could not "see" what I "saw" as obvious "truth." I would state what I thought was an undeniable "truth," and be totally taken off guard when others would challenge me, because I had never even imagined that anyone could think anything other than what I thought.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: Hah! I didn't notice your username until after I posted. Choice of the name Fred is purely coincidental.

Yes. I mean, you, Rachel Cohen R. Thank you for chiming in. I once read your blog which was about deconstructing ToM, I thought. Am I right or wrong? This was some time ago. What are your views today?

IMHO ToM is pretty much a load of you know what. First of all it bothers me that the Sally Ann experiment ("scientific" basis of ToM) is used to conclude ASD participants don't read the mind of another. From what I can tell, Sally Ann just tests visual processing patterns--it's actually a measure of which objects are tracked in a specific visual context and has little to do with human understanding of another's mind. My son understands minds in an intuitive way more than anything else--not through assessing who put what doll named Sally Ann where.

Rachel, what do you make of ToM now?

That was not Rachel C. Rottenberg, the author and blogger posting, that was me, Paintingdiva.

Posting on chat boards can get confusing to say the least.

That was me, wrongplanet 'member' posting her website to help you out, you said you were looking for her information.

It would be very cool if she posted here but not yet as far as I know.