Are you aware of your lacking Theory of Mind?

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I believe Theory of Mind deficits are what causes problems for autistics. Executive Dysfunction and Weak Central Coherence are merely implications of the lacking ToM, imo.


Do you feel a lack of ToM, i.e. the ability to attribute mental states —beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.— to yourself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from your own?

Do you make "mental scripts" you follow as a way to compensate?

I tend to not be aware during social interactions, then slowly become aware that I missed a lot afterwards, but I'm not what I missed.

Do I have any compensatory strategies? I'm not sure. It doesn't seem like I do.

Help my slow mind to understand Theory of Mind.

By your definition it is the ability to attribute mental states - beliefs, intents, desires, oretending, knowledge, etc - to yourself and others.

Okay, I'll use "hot" and "cold" to help break this down for myself.

I believe I am cold. I intend to be warm. I desire warmth. I'm pretending to be warm. I have knowledge that I am cold.

Is this what ToM is? To understand that someone else in the room with me doesn't feel the same way I do?

I think you are developing a highly idiosyncratic concept of Theory of Mind, qawer.

Executive Function and Theory of Mind really don't have anything to do with each other.

I think you are looking for a sort of grand unified theory of autism (in a similar way to seeing self interest versus selflessness as key distinctions between NT and autistic thinking) and it just isn't like that.

I think you should read up a bit on what Theory of Mind and Executive Function really mean before putting too much into this idea. But perhaps it is I who have misunderstood. I am sure there are some very knowledgeable people on WP who can help sort that out.

I believe I have a pretty healthy ToM. I would certainly pass the Sally-Anne test. What I lack is awareness of the subtle visual language that most people use to communicate emotionally and socially in addition to their speech.
I think I am pretty good at reading gross emotional messages in body language, but there is a level I just don't get and I sometimes find myself asking people what they were just thinking because I have seen that there was a change, but I don't know what it means. That's not the same thing as lacking ToM. It's lacking the automatic signal recognition for those types of signal.

I also think that I may be worse at some of this stuff than I think, but since I can't tell what I'm not getting, I don't have a reliable way of assessing how well I am reading the signals.

qawer, theory of mind doesn't have anything to do with executive function. They're separate things. I am not sure how "weak central coherence" applies either.

I am not sure that theory of mind applies directly to one's own mind the way you're doing, either. It seems to me like you want an "autism theory of everything" and I don't think it'll work. Even my preferred explanation (processing differences) probably fails to account for things.

Rather than trying to make autism fit one single explanation, it seems to me that it helps more to accept that autism, being a pervasive developmental disorder, presents with pervasive difficulties not restricted to one's capacity for social cognition. That anyone with an ASD - whatever it might be called - likely will present with multiple impairments that may not have a direct connection, and that there's not one single "autism" that everyone diagnosed with an ASD has, but likely several different possible etiologies and presentations.

I've had at least basic "theory of mind" as long as I can remember. Maybe I lacked it when I was 5 or 6 years old when I should have developed it earlier. As an adult it doesn't really matter because I can figure people out easy enough, in fact better than some NTs, just using my intellect.

That's funny, I would say it was the other way around, with weak central coherence causing problems with theory of mind.

I'm not sure how it could go the other way. Can you explain?

And to answer your question, as far as I know, I don't lack it, I just don't use it as easily or naturally as other people do. I mean, I'm likely to forget that other people don't know what I know or are likely to be thinking such-and-such.

I should explain myself.

This is a personal theory I have drawn from personal experience and (what I believe to be) common sense. But as always with autism, it's hard to tell what the real truth is.

So my claim is that:

Autistics lack/have a weak theory of mind -> therefore they also have Executive Dysfunction and a Weak Central Coherence.


Having a Theory of Mind is basically about intuitively being aware that you yourself and others are constantly attempting to survive.


Weak Central Coherence: (an inability to bring together various details from perception to make a meaningful whole)

In order to "make a meaningful whole" you have to have a theory of mind. What people intuitively think of as a "meaningful whole" is always related to survival. When you have a theory of mind you automatically discard all details that are not important for survival. Objectively nothing is meaningful. Meaningsfulness is merely a human concept. Everything in the world just is. But people find eating food meaningful because it improves their chance of survival. People find it meaningful to take a bus from A to B because (they believe) it improves their survival-opportunities one way or the other. If they did not take that bus they might never get home, putting their survival at risk. This is what lies behind the word "meaningful". But when you don't have a Theory of Mind, you cannot make a meaningful whole out of details, because your mind is not automatically aware what meaningful means (it means anything that improves survival). Instead autistics may end up spending a lot of time on things that are not meaningful in the traditional sense (i.e., end up being "weird").


Executive dysfunction: (impairment or deficits in the higher-order processes that enable us to plan, sequence, initiate, and sustain our behavior towards some goal, incorporating feedback and making adjustments along the way.)

It will obviously give you trouble when you are not automatically aware that you are trying to survive. The executive dysfunction is due to not being constantly aware that you are trying to survive the way people with a common Theory of Mind are. Making adjustments is for instance a matter of being aware that you are surviving...you should always change lane if that other lane would be better for your survival. You won't do this enough when you aren't constantly aware of your own survival.

What you describe as autism I find impossible to identify with. I have no idea what you're talking about or how you could possibly have concluded these things.

I just want to be Morbo and yell "None of those things work that way."

I just looked up the Wikipedia definition of Theory of Mind but, like a lot of their definitions, makes no sense. I know their authors mean well but to me they fail to break their meanings down so slowpokes like me can understand.

I did just read up on its definition from Psychology Today, though. It comes from Simon Baron-Cohen and it says, "In brief, having a theory of mind is to be able to reflect on the contents of one's own and other's minds."

If that is ToM, then I don't see how it's possible to be able to reflect on the contents of another person's mind.