Comment on Dr. Frith's paper @ AWARES conference

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AWARES is currently having their online conference on autism >>

http://www.awares.org/conferences

I left a comment on Dr. Uta Frith's paper, If we knew what causes autism: why it is important to talk about cognition. (Unfortunately, the AWARES discussion board doesn't seem to recognize paragraph breaks, so now my essay looks like one, looooong run-on sentence.)

Here's what I had to say -- properly formatted! >>

"If We Knew What Causes Autism" -- Problems with the concept of 'mentalizing'

Professor Uta Frith writes: "What is mentalizing? By mentalizing we mean the intuitive attribution of mental states, desires, feeling and beliefs, to others. Most ordinary people find it extremely easy to ‘put themselves in another person’s shoes’, or to recognise what another person may think or feel, to predict and explain their behaviour."

I know that other Aspies/Auties have, on many occasions, questioned whether or not it's true that people on the autistic spectrum have difficulties 'mentalizing' (in other words, have a deficient or lack of 'theory of mind'). I want to bring the issue up once again because I don't think that autism researchers have fully addressed this question -- and I think it would be great if they did so now in this more public forum.

My question is not so much do Aspies/Auties lack the ability to mentalize, but rather does mentalizing -- as defined by Dr. Frith above -- really exist at all? Do most ordinary people really "find it extremely easy to 'put themselves in another person's shoes?'" And, can they truly recognise what other people "think or feel"? I realize that the very fact that I ask these questions at all might be a dead giveaway that I lack the ability to mentalize -- maybe I just can't envision how it is to be a non-autistic person. However, I don't see that it has either been properly discussed or definitively demonstrated that "most ordinary people" truly have such an intuitive ability. I think that by working through a brief thought experiment, it will be seen that putting oneself in another person's shoes is not "extremely easy" at all -- and that to believe that accurate mentalizing is a fully intuitive process is misguided.

First of all, Dr. Frith's definition of "mentalizing" includes a number of abilities from attributing "mental states, desires, feelings and beliefs to others" to being able to recognise what other people think or feel as well as being able to predict and explain their behavior -- all, apparently, intuitively. This is quite a broad range of abilities. I do believe that Aspies/Auties have difficulties with some or all of these aspects of mentalizing (as Dr. Frith has defined it).

For my own part, I clearly recall having an epiphany one day when I was around eleven or twelve years old: I was on the bus studying the man sitting across from me when suddenly it struck me that I could have NO idea what was going on in that man's head and that I could NEVER experience how it was to be him. How could I? I couldn't get inside his head -- I couldn't swap bodies or brains with him. It was a shocking and life-changing experience -- from that day onwards I've tried my darndest to understand other people (and myself, as well). In doing so, I've asked myself down through the years, how do people come to understand -- as much as they can understand at all -- what other people are thinking and how they are feeling? How can we know what other peoples' mental states are?

Well, from what I can tell, the first step of mentalizing is the recognition of emotions as expressed by others. The expression of emotions is the most fundamental method by which feelings and, perhaps, mental states are communicated. (Please, bear with me if this all sounds very basic, but I really want to get down to the nuts and bolts of how people 'mentalize.') People laugh, cry, get angry -- all of the emotions are expressed by people (without thinking, of course -- unless they are purposefully trying to deceive someone) in order to elicit a response from other people around them.

However, while we can look at someone and intuit (or consciously conclude) -- ah! that person is crying therefore they must be sad -- I would ask, how can anyone 'intuitively' know what that person is thinking? Surely, the next (second) step after noticing that the person is sad is to start wondering WHY they might be sad. It might be readily apparent. For example, we might watch a friend crying at a funeral. We might intuit from the fact that they are crying that they are sad (rightly so, I think). But the bext step -- to understand WHY they are crying -- WHAT has caused them to be sad and what they are THINKING -- I do not believe can be achieved intuitively.

I think many people believe they can intuitively understand why their friend is crying/sad -- i.e. that they are grieving over the loss of the deceased. But, what if the actual reason they are crying is because the deceased had cut them out of their will and they are no longer due to inherit the fortune they have been expecting? Without having access to this additional, crucial infomation, there is no way anyone could possibily intuitively mentalize what our friend "may think or feel." We might run through in our minds all sorts of possible reasons why our friend may be crying -- and we might actually hit upon the actual truth -- but, without knowing the facts of what had transpired regarding the will, we wouldn't really be "recognising" what they were thinking or feeling at all. We would simply be assuming that they felt sad for a certain reason and would believe we knew, more or less, what they were thinking.

Furthermore, it's unlikely, then, that we would be able to "predict" what they will do. For instance, we might go up to them after the funeral to offer our condolences, assuming that our friend has been crying due to grief. In our mind, we would have predicted (probably not very consciously) that they would respond to us perhaps with sorrow, perhaps with thanks. But, wow -- won't we be surprised when they respond to us with a hostile expletive since all along they have really been angry and upset! (Of course, our friend might choose be polite out of courtesy -- but, nevertheless, we still have not intuitively understood what they were feeling or thinking. We have just been doubly fooled -- once by ourselves and secondly by our friend.)

This is just one example of how I think "mentalizing" doesn't actually exist as Dr. Frith has defined it. While I do believe that most people can readily identify emotions in other people via recognition of emotional expression in others -- an identification process possibly lacking or different in Aspies/Auties -- I fail to see how any ordinary person can accurately know what another person is truly thinking or know the reasons for why they are feeling a certain emotion. People might believe that they can do this and operate under the assumption that they can -- and in many instances this (unconscious) strategy might work pretty well (probably why it's been selected for, evolutionarily speaking) -- but they are, nonetheless, operating under an illusion. They are not mentalizing -- at least not as defined above.

And, thus, all of the misunderstanding that happens in human relations around the world.... What I mean is, if most people in the world could actually mentalize so easily and successfully, we'd expect there to little or no misunderstanding and hurt feelings between people (except for those purposefully caused). Right? But this, if we take a look around us, is far from the case.

Aspiegirl, I think you're reading it way too literally. Of course, it is impossible to know exactly what someone is thinking. If people could do that intuitively, they'd call it Telepathy rather than Theory of Mind/Mentalizing. Its not so much about being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes, either. Its more about being able to relate to what the other is feeling. Understanding that there is a plausible reason why they might be crying. The exact reason is not known, though its assumed to be due to matters at hand, and people react accordingly.
Dr. Frith's definition of "mentalizing" as far as attributing "mental states, desires, feelings and beliefs to others", is BS. We have a problem with attributing our own mental states, desires, feelings and beliefs as being existent in everyone else. We can attribute stuff to others, no problems.

Oh ho, sure you can. Its natural to assume that what is causing the reaction is the matter that is at hand. And so NT's intuitively assume that that is the reason why. Of course, there is other matching that occurs intuitively. Even us. For instance, if someone bursts out laughing at their mother's funeral. People would intuitively think that it was wrong, an inappropriate reaction. They would naturally grasp that one would be sad at a funeral. Only, it isn't an inappropriate reaction. The laugher could be thinking about the good times, about some quip the mother made, some aspect of his mother he is trying to hold onto, to remember.

In truth, theory of mind, or mentalizing, is not about being correct in assuming what we asssume. Noone can intuitively know that, except by being accidentally right in their assumptions; generally they are right, since it is generally the matter at hand. Theory of mind/mentalizing is merely about attributing SOMETHING to others, right or wrong. My problem, and your problem too from the look of it, probably everyone's problem, is that we want to know EXACTLY what they are thinking/feeling before we attribute it. Its like the problem with words, which I describe as trying to pull a drop of water from an ocean. You can't pull one single thought/emotion to ascribe to someone, we don't grasp enough intuitive clues or coordinates of that drop's location. The clues/coordinates have to be consciously deduced.

Yes, well, this is exactly my point -- that "mentalizing" or "theory of mind" is pretty much based on a bunch of assumptions after the initial stage of first recognizing that another person is expressing an emotion (to convey feeling, thoughts, mental state, etc.), and secondly of working out what that emotion is (happy, sad, angry, etc.).

I understand that perhaps some autists don't do even this. But I know many Aspies, including myself (I'm self-diagnosed), do notice emotions -- know other people are capable of them -- and, to differing levels of success, identify what those emotions are. I feel that where we, as Aspies, often go wrong is that we then don't know what to do with that information. And, personally, I'm often stumped as what to do because I recognise that I don't necessarily know why someone is feeling the way that they are apparently feeling (unless it's really obvious). So, I usually ask -- i.e. what's wrong (or right, if they're happy!)? Many people in my experience, though, do not ask -- they just assume. And, they frequently get it wrong.

Well, if that act of assuming is what is known as "theory of mind" -- then, yes, my theory of mind is 'defective'!

What I was trying to convey, though, in my response is that I haven't seen a good discussion anywhere of the processes involved in how we as humans -- or how non-autistic humans vs. austists -- come to understand the thoughts/feelings/mental states of other people. From what I've read to date, researchers simply throw the statement "theory of mind" (or, in this case, "mentalizing") out there with little or no definition, and no discussion (let alone proof) of how theory of mind works (or doesn't). That's what I was trying to get at -- the assumptions researchers are making about the assumptions people make! (Maybe they should call it something like "theory of emotional states" -- I could accept that more readily.)

Thanks for your input! I will head off and contemplate it for a while. And, of course I take things too literally -- I'm an Aspie!

I like Baron-Cohen's explanation of how people understand the emotional states of others. He postulates a cognitive and (paraphrased) an emotional/relational component to this process. This is my extrapolation:

There is a continuum of ability to project oneself into the experience of others. If seen as three dimensional, one could locate an empathetic response in areas that are more cognitive, more emotional and more relational. The most cognitive response would involve someone thinking, that person is crying. They must be sad. The most emotional response would be to cry when someone else is crying. The most relational response would be to project one's own experience onto the other person in an effort to connect, or to communicate, I am like you.

So the average NT response might look like this: I am at a funeral, someone I know and feel connected to is crying. They must be sad that the other person died, and I am sad because the person I am connected to is sad and I too would be sad if someone I loved died. And the person would cry. This usually happens at the speed of thought or faster, and the person just starts crying. There is all kinds of humor based on what you suggested, that the person crying is crying for some other reason, and sets everyone else on an empathic response based on faulty thinking.

Here, by contrast, is my response: Wow, I am at a funeral. There are too many people here. I can't sit where I want to sit. People are crying. My father is crying. He must have really loved his mother. This is pretty sad. I wonder if I would cry if my father died? I guess not. I wonder if I would cry if my mother died? I hope I would. Oh, no, what if I don't cry? What if people expect me to cry here? What will they think if I don't? I wonder if there will be food? There are too many people to fit in her house. I hope they don't all come? I wonder if there will be ham?

At some point my father gave a little speech and cried, and I cried but wasn't sure why I was crying. That was it. When my favorite grandmother died, I didn't cry at all.

In my mind, empathy is simply projection. One does not respond to an experience of the other person's emotional state - they respond to what they think (based on thier own experience) the other person is experiencing.