Theory Of Mind

Question 1

Strength understanding ASD

Answer 1

TOM tests can help to offer symptoms and diagnose people with autism and help with understanding ASD. Tests used to asses TOM are difficult for people with ASD, possibly because they find it difficult to understand what people are thinking. This in turn offers an explanation as to why people with ASD often find social interaction difficult, it is difficult to interact with someone if you can’t get a sense of what they are thinking/feeling. TOM has real world evidence.

Question 2

Weakness reliance on false belief tasks.

Answer 2

Theory of mind has a reliance on false belief tasks to test the theory. These tasks are ones such as the Sally-Anne study and the Hinez and Derner study. The Sally-anne task may have issues with validity. False belief tasks require other cognitive abilities such as visual memory. This causes a disruption when trying to establish cause and effect as it may be the impairments of other abilities not theory of mind.

Question 3

Weakness fails to distinguish TOM from perspective taking.

Answer 3

Research techniques fell to distinguish theory of mind from perspective taking. For example the Sally-Anne task does it ask any questions causing the child to consider anyone else’s thoughts and feelings. They are closely related so it’s difficult to measure only one. The Sally Anne study they may just be taking on the visual perspective. This means that with the exception of the eyes task tasks designed to measure theory of mind may actually measure perspective taking.

Question 4

Weakness does not provide complete explanation for ASD.
Tager-Flusberg

Answer 4

Fairy of mine does not provide a complete explanation for ASD. Not everyone with ASD experiences theory of mind problems not a theory of mind problem is limited to people with ASD. The lack of theory of mind cannot explain the cognitive strengths are people with ASD for example superior visual attention (Tager-Flusberg). This means that there must be other factors that are involved in ASD and the association between ASD and theory of mind is not as strong as firstly believed.