Theory of Mind vs Cognitive Empathy

Post Reply New Topic

Because of the increasingly convoluted theories of Simon-Baron Cohen, Theory of Mind and Cognitive Empathy are often regarded as being the same thing. They are not, and while they are related, the distinction is important.

Have you ever seen the horrible picture that has circulated on the Internet of a drawing of a women with the description "to a person with autism, this is not a person, but an object" or something like that. That is obviously completely false and frankly dehumanizing, but it's based on the myth that people with autism do not have theory of mind. In the most basic, binary sense, theory of mind is the belief* that other people have different mental states than our own. While autistic people in general do not lack this, ALL very young children do. It's not clear when exactly most children develop this as the tests on the matter may test other things than theory of mind (after all, beliefs cannot be observed, only the possible effects of beliefs), but I believe it's much earlier than most researchers assume as to me it's clear theory of mind is a prerequisite to true communication as a deliberate, two-way process. Autistic children may tend develop theory of mind later than other children, again the tests are inconclusive, but with the possible exception of only the most severe cases, it's still developed as fairly young children.

A more sophisticated definition of theory of mind has it not as a binary condition, but as an accumulation of beliefs in all the ways other people's minds differ from their own: people see different things than they do, feel different things than they do, like different things than they do ect. No ones theory of mind is every perfect because of the egocentric dilemma: everything we know about the world comes through the filter of our own mind, so we can't truly understand what it's like without it. So here theory of mind can be seen as a lifelong development based on experience. The tests that conclude that children lack theory of mind are generally based on visual theory of mind eg. an example from my text book had a boy demonstrating how to play a board game to another boy who was wearing a blindfold; he couldn't see the first boys demonstration. Of course, the first boy still had enough theory of mind to understand the concept of teaching despite his teaching method being ineffective as he didn't realize the other boy couldn't see what he was doing. In general, autistic people probably develop theory of mind slower than their peers due to less social interaction. The same pattern has also been noticed in deaf people. There are some other anomalies in autistic people I'll note though. First, is naturally strong affective empathy^ actually probably delays emotional theory of mind as it makes it harder to differentiate ones own emotions from other people's. Second, there is also probably one area where on average autistic people probably have better theory of mind: realization that other people think differently than they do. This is because autistic people are often explicitly taught this in order to deal with a world where others think differently than they do, while neurotypicals take it for granted that other people think like they do.

Cognitive empathy, meanwhile, is the ability to assign mental states (especially emotions) to other people. Obviously, theory of mind is a prerequisite to it. But it's probably better seen as a process than a trait: sometimes the assignment of mental state is more accurate than other times. One who better assigns mental states more often is seen as having better cognitive empathy, but truth is it's ultimately situational, so assigning a number to cognitive empathy fails to cover all of a person's nuances in applying the skill. For example, there are different ways to gauge emotional state, such as by reading nonverbal cues, or by analyzing a situation. Someone could be could at doing one, but not the other. Does that mean the person has poor cognitive empathy or not? It can't be said. Having a more developed theory of mind can assist in cognitive empathy, but there are countless other factors which can cause cognitive empathy to still fail in a situation. Therefor, a seeming lack of cognitive empathy CANNOT be concluded to be a lack of theory of mind.

But for some reason, problems with cognitive empathy in autism are often interpreted as being the result of impaired theory of mind. Why? It's already known that autistic people often have problems reading nonverbal cues, with some being bad at picking up on vocal tone, others being poor at reading facial expressions, so why is that explanation being ignored? Then there is the issue of alexithymia, where one has problems interpreting their OWN mental states, so that should be accounted for first when they seem to have problems interpreting OTHERS mental states, rather than just accusing the alexithymic person of not realizing others mental states differ from their own. Finally there is the fact that often when a lack of empathy was reported, there was no actual lack of empathy, just a lack of communication. The fact autism is sometimes considered a communication disorder ought to mean that should be taken into account more, but it isn't. The whole trend seems to go back to the Sally-Ann test for theory of mind being interpreted as meaning far more it actually does, and this is largely just extrapolated from a study of two decades old. Since then, countless more research has been done and autism is much better understood. The fact is, even if autistic people have some impairments or delays in theory of mind, they still have much better theory of mind than some people assume. As shown earlier, the assumption that autistic people lack theory of mind has lead to some disastrous results, and there are many other problems with cognitive empathy in autism worth investigating so maybe it's time to put a close on this narrative and open up another one.

And lastly, we should stop calling things that aren't Theory of Mind ToM so we can finally lay this dead horse to rest!

*in so much as everything we know about our world is ultimately a belief, the alternative is solipsism

^this implies an impairment in cognitive empathy, but cognitive empathy can also be used to further affective empathy; the two processes and their relationship are too complicated for me to fully describe at this time

TL;DR: Theory of mind is the belief other people have mental states, cognitive empathy is the ability to assign said mental states. Having problems with cognitive empathy DOES NOT imply a lack of theory of mind. Regardless of whether or not impairments of theory of mind are common in autism, It's clear a lack of theory of mind is NOT a distinguishing characteristic of autism, so it should stop being treated as such.

I still don't fully understand what theory of the mind means. Someone give me an example of it, like by using "person A and person B" sort of thing. That way I learn better what things mean.

If I'm right, I'm just learning about Theory of Mind now from the perspective of a toddler who's just reaching that stage. And it's the understanding that other people can think differently to you. Notably, it's developed through 'lying', somewhat.

My toddler knows that my mind is separate from hers and that I might not see things from her perspective. So, she's learning that she can lie. Just because she knows something not to be true, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'll realise it's not true. She can't necessarily comprehend yet that I will know when she's lying - she simply thinks that she's able to know one thing, and I can believe another.

"Cognitive Empathy," to me, is a TYPE of Theory of Mind.

Theory of Mind is the general concept. It is when you are aware that people have thoughts and feelings which are different from your own. It means you know, fully, that another person is another person, rather than merely an extension of you.

Cognitive Empathy, simply put, is the ability to know that people have different emotions from their own emotions. It also has to do with the ability to discern that, say, somebody will be sad if a close relative dies.

Theory of mind means you understand others have different thoughts. An example would be just because you are honest and wouldn't rip someone off doesn't mean another person will not do that to you so hence the reason why people with ASDs are more trusting. It doesn't occur to them that the other person could just run off with their car they are trying to sell and not come back with the money like they said they would the following week. An example of TOM would be I was having a yard sale last September and these guys stop by and look at the video games and the 3DS and DS game cases I am selling and they are ready to buy everything they had picked out and I didn't want to leave them alone so I ran to the front door instead watching the drive way because in my head I thought "I don't know these guys so I don't know how honest they are or if they will just get in their car and leave while I am inside getting my father to get the price about his old puzzle he is selling." A person who has issues with TOM would think those men would just stay there and wait while the person A is inside getting the price on the old jigsaw and they don't even consider how those men can just take off with the stuff without paying while Person A is inside just because person A would be standing outside waiting if they were in that position buying stuff and they would never take off without paying. It's like projection.

I have never met anyone during my life who did not realise that different people have different thoughts, and that now amounts to many thousands of people. Even seriously challenged people with significant brain damage knew this.

Anyone who has ever lived in a very different culture which speaks a different language (which the visitor can't/can barely speak) will have some degree of trouble linking up the perspectives of natives (founded on their culture background and shared understandings) with what they say and do and really mean, what they intend to communicate. This doesn't mean the temporary resident lacks an inherent ability to see that others have different thoughts and meanings, nor that the temporary resident lacks cognitive empathy or TOM.

The key words for me in this debate are perspective and intention. Examples: In everyday life, people from all walks of life, NTs included, have some difficulty intuiting perspective in others. A man meets a friendly type of woman and she smiles at him. He can't figure out her perspective: is she flirting with him, or is she just a pleasant person with a nice personality? Someone seems to be too busy to return our calls. Are they angry with us, or preoccupied with huge work demands, are they hoping we will give up on them, are they saying they are too busy or are they really too busy? Someone smiles at us while saying something insulting - what's the main message, the insult or the smile?

Socially incongruent behaviour is so manifest and ingrained in daily life, that it is a very great skill to define the exact messages. NTs are much more comfortable with, and attuned to, the mixed message style; from my observations, ASD people less so. Though this doesn't prove that ASD people lack the ability to know that other people have thoughts which are different from their own. It may be, for example, that ASD people generally depend on a different set of signals and values to intuit and abscribe meaning.

Many ASD people have a bias toward truth and factual intercommunication: they dislike pretence and avoid or won't participate in it, perhaps to a much greater degree than occurs in the NT world, ASD's often refuse to participate in the informal conversational mode of social hypocrisy - not saying what you mean, and not meaning what you say - most ASD people far prefer discourse in which what is said represents what is meant. This can be seem as NTs as 'a lack of cognitive empathy' though that label could be explained in terms of labelling theory, rather than the theorised TOM theory.

Hmm, it's not that I trust people enough to leave them unattended where it is easy for them to steal, but I do have poor memory and attention. For example, I used to get distracted and leave my bags unattended, but it's not because I was thinking that nobody will do such a thing as steal my belongings or scrounge in them for money, I already knew how discreet thieves can be. It was just that I would forget myself and go wandering off, completely distracted.

But NTs can't read minds though. When Aspies explain theory of mind, it begins to sound like NTs have telepathic powers and can detect another's precise thinking, like "oh I can see that person is thinking about a red sweater". Obviously if a person is looking at a red sweater it might be more easy, but I'm talking about if there is no red sweater in sight and nobody is talking about a red sweater.

I can detect what a person is feeling by recognizing body language, tone of voice and facial expressions. If I am a little uncertain what a person means just by their tone of voice, then I look at their facial expression, which then makes it quite clear what sort of response they want, which I give to them. It feels fairly natural to me.

Someone else mentioned children lying which was a good example of this. ToM is the knowledge that other people can have a different world view than you. That they can know different things, feel different things etc. ToM is something that children develop around 3 to 4 years old. Children learn to lie around three years old which is no coincidence, it shows they are developing ToM.

If you put a child in a room with a toy and tell them not to touch it, then leave the room (at which point the child plays with the toy), and re-enter the room and ask if the child touched the toy then without ToM the child thinks that you know it touched the toy as they know they touched the toy so they won't (can't) lie. With ToM they realise that the other person didn't see them touch they toy so the other person lacks the knowledge that they touched the toy so the child learns that it can lie.

Autistic children tend to develop ToM slightly later than non-autistic children. Obviously by the time children are older ToM is in place regardless of autism, and that goes for adults too. No adult, autistic or not, is going to lack ToM (unless they lack it for some other reason), the issue is that autistic children tend to develop it later than non-autistic children.

I understand intellectually that other people have their own thoughts, perspective, mental states, worldview, emotions and so on, but in real time situations I sometimes have lot of difficultly in putting that into practice and using it to understand what they might be thinking or feeling. I can see the signals given in body language and facial expressions, but sometimes misinterpret what they mean.

I am pretty good at pattern recognition, over time the more I am around a person I can guess pretty well at what they will say or do next, and from that I can extrapolate what they might be thinking. I can also recognize some patterns in people I am not as familiar with, if the pattern itself is very familiar.

But sometimes still people surprise me and blindside me with their behavior. At first it might seem like there is no pattern or logic to their behavior, but eventually I realize there IS a pattern, I just didn't connect the dots right away because it's very unlike how I would think or behave.

I've realized that although I do totally understand the concept that other people are different, I still default to the assumption that other people are like me, that they think like me, have intentions like my own, and so on. And it doesn't seem to matter how much my life experience shows me otherwise, I still do it, to my own detriment.

However when people TELL me what they think or feel, or how they see things...when people share things with me, however small those details are, I can think very deeply on those things, put them together into a bigger picture, put myself in their place and hopefully understand where they are coming from. That's what I think of as cognitive empathy.

Okay bad example I used then. An example of TOM would be person A enjoys playing with Polly Pockets. Her friend Sara Person B doesn't like Polly Pockets so she tells her friend person A that. Person A understands her best friend is not into Polly Pockets so she doesn't make her play with them with her. When I was little, I had a friend named Sara and she told me she hated Polly Pockets but I still had her play with them with me because I didn't get that she doesn't like them and I couldn't understand why she would say it. I thought she was teasing me because I liked them so I didn't think someone else wouldn't like them. That is lacking TOM there. I prefer to call it TOM deficits because I wasn't totally mind blind. I didn't think people knew my thoughts and I still lied to try and avoid trouble and sometimes make up stories and expect people to believe them. But since someone on here wrote how their two year old will lie, their toddler doesn't understand that they (the person here posting that story) would have her thought of her own that she would know her kid is lying so maybe it was a still a TOM deficit I was having for lying. It used to puzzle me how my mom knew what I was doing in my playhouse when I was five years old despite having all the windows and the door closed. To this day I still wonder how she knew so I assume she must have saw through the cracks from inside our house and she had good eye sight. That is the only logical way she would know because no way did she had x ray eyes. But it was probably a TOM deficit on my part because I thought if I had everything closed, my mom wouldn't be able to see me.

Personally I'm wary of both constructs. I think "empathy" in particular can be very misleading, and the ill-feeling its use causes in the autistic community makes me wonder whether it was smart to create the term. "Theory of mind" seems an odd term to me, as I'm pretty sure I'd have passed the classic "Sally Ann" test when I was a young child, and like somebody has already said, it's hard to find anybody with an atom of sense who doesn't know full well that other people often think differently to them. I can see a grain of truth in the idea, but I don't see it as a spectacular breakthrough in the understanding of autism. I've yet to see a really clear explanation of what these terms mean, I read about them but they haven't made much sense to me yet. It's more useful to me to focus on perspective-taking and compassion, which are things that I think most people, self included, would do well to practice a little more. I also think that the autistic perspective is under-represented in the professional study of autism, which will likely be somewhat in the dark until that situation is changed. Ironically, the professionals' own theory of mind looks rather underdeveloped, at least to me.

Me too.

Do we really need this thread at all? Most forums disallow duplicate threads as they are essentially troll threads. People don't want to repeat themselves on a single thread, but when the thread dies down and someone creates a duplicate it is only so that the same people can say all the same things again and have the same arguments again. If this is allowed it will go on ad infinitum. This thread is just another opportunity for the OP to perpetrate misconceptions and to throw personal abuse at people who post things he disagrees with. It's fairly pointless.

You disagree with him so you're going to do it back to him?

Last edited by RetroGamer87 on 11 Jun 2016, 6:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

I've found these hard concepts to grasp when these threads come up. I wonder if part of the issue is non-autistic people trying to understand/describe part of the autistic experience in ways an autistic person wouldn't. Personally, I may not feel much in situations when someone is sharing their emotions with me, but I think that has more to do with needing time to process/understand in my own way what they are feeling, rather than from lack of empathy. Of course to them it will look like I don't care if I don't mimic an appropriate response then and there. But, they aren't going to see over the years all of the times I recall our conversation and form my own concept/understanding of them and their experience. I have to systematically and logically put them in a context and create an understanding of their feelings. This is how I write fiction and people have responded well to it, because I observe emotional truths they don't since I have to think through those experiences more thoroughly in order to understand. It seems to me I have more empathy extended over a longer period of time, but since it's not always naturally visible they just assume I don't care, because they're "reading" me according to their "language," not mine.

No, I'm too old for silly games