Theory of Mind

Indeed, it is.

Is the paper you mention Atherton, G., Lummis, B., Day, S. X., & Cross, L. (2019). What am I thinking? Perspective-taking from the perspective of adolescents with autism. Autism, 23(5), 1186–1200. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361318793409?

Well, that's the jury's job - to assess the evidence for and against, they can't read your thoughts and they can't read the thoughts of the police who investigated it, they just have to look at the evidence that's in front of them and work out what the truth is.

As we have seen in recent years, the police have problems to sort out, abuses of power mainly - misogyny, racism, and ablism.  The police will check you out, not just what you posted, so that can lead to bias and perhaps malice.

Be careful what you post online, things can be misinterpreted, you might scare/worry people even if that wasn't meant.

Well I've got a bazaar example; I was feeling suicidal and went online to throw away psychological bad thoughts, but the police arrested me ................I then had a near fatal event just before going to court , where the jury , unsurprisingly in my view found me 100% not guilty of the major charge. I certainly did not do what I was accused of, but was caught in a scam which the police used to prosecute me.  And I thought the police were in favour of truth honesty and justice.  Seems the Met police are not though! But in court they withheld vita evidence and tried to misdirect the jury.

My thinking was , I am not doing anything criminal, but police made out the opposite!

The human brain works on the principle that things that you believe in will be absorbed, and it dismiss the rest - unless you actively open your mind to wider possibilities.

Some people develop counter-beliefs that go against what most people think, and not necessarily to annoy as you might think.

Global warming is fact + evidence.  But the earth has been hotter before - fact + evidence.

Reality is something your brain is constantly constructing, except when you sleep and that's when things get more interesting.  People with some mental health conditions experience reality differently.

There is your reality, and someone else will have theirs - there may be common bits, but there will be difference.

Autistic people typically converse to share information and gain knowledge we information transfer can be really accurate when engaging with each other.

Thanks I will read the paper.

You would think that basing your discussions and points of view on evidence, science and data would be enough to sway anybodies opinions or points of view. In the real and overly complicated world it often doesn’t work out like that. 

I have developed my own theory as to why this happens and l call it the ‘Theory of Duelling Realities.’

Hi, sounds a bit of a money spinner, to just 'assess' people for autism - but never mind, its something to work from.  

The idea of Theory of mind is knowing that other people have their own mental states, thoughts, memories, etc., and they won't be exactly the same as ours.  Its controversial, you can read about it if you are interested, but don't get hung-up on it - autism covers different aspects, not sure if anyone here has had a ToM test as part of their diagnosis or childhood assessment.  However, autistic people tend to have difficulties in that kind of area, such as reading people or working out how they are feeling, or what they might be thinking.  With autism, Its not if you can or can't do certain things, its actually the difficulty with those things - and that's what the diagnosis is about, exploring those key areas and getting a measure of difficulty, or easiness.  

The AQ test is useful, but its only a guide to your thoughts/feelings/behaviour so for a diagnosis they explore things more widely/deeply.  Take the time to explore yourself, you have listed some things that may indicate autism, but think back to childhood and teenager years, and when working - where you aware of any difficulties, did you cover them to get on with people (masking), did you keep yourself to yourself, the more you can add the better idea you will have if you are autistic and whether to seek a diagnosis, if you feel that would help.

It may not be autism, bare that in mind, but also read about people's autism stories, blogs, etc. - especially by women, because there is no getting away from the fact that much of the autism story has been skewed heavily in favour of men/boys who prefer toys to people (systemisers), the stereotype of autism.  Its moved on from this now, but make sure you explore the female side of autism so you get the whole picture.  Autism is autism, there isn't male autism or female autism, you will see this reflected in autistic peoples writing, personalities, and how they align themselves in different aspects.  

I can struggle with understanding how other people think if it's in contrast to evidence and facts.

So someone can disagree with me on masks. someone can disagree with me on vaccines. someone can disagree with me on a controversial topic and I'll presenter them the evidence the facts and they disagree and I'm like how do you disagree?

Sometimes I honestly find it very difficult to understand how are the people think differently to me because the way I think is based on evidence and facts.

Hope this helps.

Regarding the double empathy theory, I found this paper particulalry interesting: 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1362361320919286#:~:text=However%2C%20the%20Double%20Empathy%20theory,and%20a%20non%2Dautistic%20person. 

Essentially what they did is they made groups of 8 people: either 8 autistic people or 8 neurotypicals or a group of mixed austists and neurotypicals (50:50). 

A researcher would read a story to the first person in each of the groups. That person would then have to tell the story to the next person in their group. This second person would then again have to pass on the story to the following person etc. The researchers recorded how much information was lost at each recounting/ passing on of the story.

Interestingly they found that communication in autistic only groups/chains was just as effective as in neurotypical only groups. However in the mixed autistic/neurotypical group communication was much less effective and more information was lost.

This supports the idea the autistic people can communicate well amongst each others. Similarly neurotypicals communicate well with each other. The difficulties arrise when autistic people and neurotypicals communicate with each other. It probably took a while for this to be recognised as autistic people usually get judged on how they communicate with neurotypicals and not on how well they communicate with each other. 

I found this study very interesting. 

Oh sounds like some folks have read beyond what I have here and the area might be more controversial than I thought, but here's how I understand it (I'll stand corrected if others know more).

The theory of mind develops in early childhood when you first understand that other beings are seperate from you with different desires, emotions, intentions and motivations from you. The theory as I understand is that this is late developing or inefficient in autism, such that you would find it more difficult to spot someone else's motivation or notice their emotional need.

Indeed, these things can be difficult for us. As you ask for examples... for instance, twice in my professional life I've encountered that odd individual who seems to want to constantly do me down, undermine all my best efforts and make me look bad in the eyes of others. I was hurt, but at a loss to understand why. On both occasions someone I trusted put me straight. 'Don't you get it, Dawn?', they said. 'They are being like that because you can do what they cannot and they are jealous'. I still can't fathom why either of them would feel jealous. But... A) I had been clueless as to why these two behaved so badly, their motivation a mystery to me. B) I was oblivious to the fact that their emotional state was in some way so fragile as to find me threatening just because I was good at something.

Perhaps indicative of this as a  childhood example... when I was in Reception another child told me that a man in the village had a knife and was going around murdering people. I came home distraut, pleading with my parents to take this information on board and batten down the hatches so we wouldn't be killed. My mother was dismissive. She said the other girl was telling stories. I was inconsolable and retorted "what five year old child would tell lies?". I could see no other motive for this girl's story than to impart important information to me, which I should pass to my parents so they could be warned and keep us safe. I didn't understand why my mother wasn't taking it seriously and went to bed certain we would die.

But, like the others who are more critical of the theory here, I'm not entirely sure poor theory of mind is an adequate explanation of all this. I absolutely DO see that others are different from me, with their own wants and needs, but I do miss out on motivations and desires which are less honest or not verbally expressed. I do wonder whether it is less a case of "poor" theory of mind and more a case of just not reading certain non-verbal cues which would give NTs that window into unsavoury motivations, and a natural assumption on my part that others are as honest as I am, until proven otherwise.

Is the problem in my theory of mind? Is it in my poorer ability to read paralinguistics? Is it in a simple predisposition for naivety? Or a combination of a couple of these things? Don't know.

I shall research the papers you mention, seem interesting.

SpaceOctopus said:

Unfortunately, though, these theories will be and have been hard to dismiss considering our diagnostic criteria are pretty much based on them. 

Yes I agree, the diagnostic criteria is based on neurotypical assumptions and not autistic lived experience.

Ausomely Autistic speaks a lot of sense here. A recent paper by Atherton, Lummis, Day, and Cross (2019) actually found that autistic people excel in certain areas of theory of mind and that the wholesale 'deficit in theory of mind' is much too simplistic to reflect the evidence. This claim is also supported by Gernsbacher and Yergeau (2019). 

Just like other traits of autism, we can better account for them (and do so without making value judgements) by understanding them as differences rather than deficiencies in theory of mind. Unfortunately, though, these theories will be and have been hard to dismiss considering our diagnostic criteria are pretty much based on them. 

Yes, Simon Baron-Cohen is using the fact he's a Cousin of a major Celebrity to try and make himself known. His Psychopath test, he did with Jon Ronson, tried to insinuate that Christians are Psychopaths.

'Experts' are Nineteen to the Dozen these days. Mostly full of hot air.

Intelligence and experience can replace the neurotypical instinctive ability for divining the mental states of others. As such, it seems to be a meaningless concept as a defining feature of autism, when applied to autistics without intellectual disability.

Hello, I understand that you have read about Theory of Mind but this theory was devised by a non autistic person who is heavily criticised by the autistic community. The idea that it is fundamental to being autistic is wrong.

The idea that autistic people have difficulty with Theory of Mind is innacurate - another false and harmful claim from Simon Baron Cohen. Autistic people have a Theory of Mind it’s just that cross neurotype interactions frequently lead to misunderstandings as both groups of people have vastly different experiences of the world. Therefore it becomes difficult to relate to each other. Autistic masking is also very common which also means that SBC’s theory is wrong as we understand how we are perceived by non autistic people. Have you heard of the Double Empathy problem?

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/professional-practice/double-empathy

https://autisticscienceperson.com/2018/05/31/theory-of-mind/amp/

I’m 39 and not even questioned theory of mind. I don’t even know what it is.. but your question sounds like fun