Uta Frith people with ASD can't mentalize ?

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I saw the Horizon program on bbc2 last night which I found very interesting. However, I was staggered to hear Uta Frith say that people with ASD can't mentalize.

Was curious if people here are able to mentalize? I Know many with ASD who can.




"Mentalization is a psychological concept that describes the ability to understand the mental stateof oneself and others which underlies overtbehaviour.[1] Mentalization can be seen as a form of imaginative mental activity, which allows us to perceive and interpret human behaviour in terms of intentional mental states (e.g. needs, desires, feelings, beliefs, goals, purposes, and reasons).[2][3]Another term that David Wallin has used for mentalization is "Thinking about thinking"

That seems an odd thing to say. Are you sure it wasn't more specific than that?

Hi Smudge

yes, that's what she said.

There is 'understanding' and 'understanding'.I think it is meant that mentalization is a process that is being 'felt' or having a deeper understanding, like something that comes naturally to you.

To be honest I just mimic it, for me it is a logical process, a trick.

Mentalistic abilities: Theory of Mind

(It's the term used by Ángel Rivière)

I guess my point is that making blanket statements or seeing everyone in the spectrum as not having ToM is rather patronising in my view.

I know many in the spectrum who have such abilities though some have varying degrees of difficulty in communicating this felt experience. Some have no such difficulty.

A generalization that applies ONLY to autistic children. A "learning DISability" is not a "learning INability."

Once again, the very existence of autistic adults is ignored.

Thank you Willard.

beautifully put

There would be no lasting marriages if "mentalization" as defined by Frith was a real ability. Imagine living with someone and being able to tune in to their immediate thoughts, feelings, motives. NTs actually can't do this! Apart from the psychic ones of course...

I don't think Frith is being quite as blanket as it has been made out here. At one point, she spoke to a very high functioning autism advocate who works for the National Autistic Society, and they had a discussion about how we can "learn" social skills that we don't have naturally.

There was certainly no ignorance of the existence of autistic adults. Probably 75% of the show focused on high functioning adults and older teenagers. A few minutes focused on a man who needed a lot of support (lived in sheltered accomondation etc.), a little while was her chatting to SBC about the boundary or lack thereof between autistic and NT, and there were a few minutes dedicated to children doing the Sally Anne test and a few similar things.

Autistic adults certainly struggle with mentalisation. We can do the Sally Anne test, but we aren't as good as NTs at prescribing motivations and such. They did an experiment with adults on the show (giving motivations to animated triangles) that demonstrated that. I can think of many examples from my everyday life where I struggled.

It was a really good show, though if anything it was probably focused too much on individuals with HFA.

For a long time I tended to see the motivations of others through rose-tinted glasses. To my own detriment, I tried to be "fair" to them, often despite mounting evidence that they were grossly unfair to me. I saw another human being whom I assumed (naively) had the same basic needs as me for honesty, sincerity, co-operation etc. They saw a target for their bullying, exploitation, ego-tripping..

Well the good news is that I stamped on those glasses and learnt to be an observer of how many NTs manipulate, lie and use others as their way of being in relationships and friendships. I think this means I do understand a lot about their thoughts and motives! Life certainly improved from that point.

I think she was mostly talking about the children being diagnosed, but I do think that some things she stated on the show were a little too suggestive that all people on the spectrum have this or that trait, even while she also pointed out that a spectrum is a spectrum, kinda thing. So I kind of liked and didn't like the documentary as I feel she both covered a lot of ground that could open a lot of the general public's eyes, yet she also didn't make it clear enough just how diverse the traits and abilities actually are.

For example, she picked a very high functioning couple to show how autists can form bonds and be a couple -- all good. Yet she happened to pick a couple who also feel very clinically about their bond and even admitted they don't feel the emotion of missing each other when apart. That gives a false impression to the public that a person on the spectrum can't feel strong emotion -- and there are in fact emotive spectrumites who in fact can feel strongly in love and bond to the point of clinging.

I realize that of course not every single variation of person could be represented on a one-hour show, and the show did well to present how wide-ranging people on the spectrum can be. I just think it still didn't make clear how even wider the variations actually are.


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I'm not making any judgments on this. I am just providing it as information. This is probably what she's referring to. **Edit** Sorry I pasted the wrong link. Here is the correct one



http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/~bradd/ftd/social/frith_philtransroyalsociety_2003.pdf

All Frith was saying is that mentalization (ToM) does not come instinctively for those of us on the spectrum. She's right. I've learned some ToM to survive, but it's like a foreign language. I see the patterns in others' behaviors, but I don't "get" others' behaviors.