Theory of Mind and FBTs

Question 1

Baron-Cohen (1995)

Answer 1

ToM is the understanding of peoples mental states including emotions, desires, beliefs and intentions
One must be aware that these processes are different for each individual

Question 2

Schaafsma et al (2015)

Answer 2

The definition of ToM refers to many different processes - ToM can be hard to operationalise in research and ToM means so many different things to so many different people
The definition of ToM needs to be deconstructed into independent cognitive processes and then reconstructed as a result of the research findings

Question 3

Wimmer and Perner (1983)

Answer 3

FBTs were origionally verbal stories - Maxi Task

Question 4

Baron-Cohen (1985)

Answer 4

Child friendly FBTs have visual and interactive components - Sally-Anne Task

Question 5

Wellman (2014)

Answer 5

Autistic children are worse than typically developing children at FBTs - this is likely due to insufficient development of the cognitive processes which excacibate ToM defecit

Question 6

Schuwerk, Vuori and Sodian (2015)

Answer 6

Autistic adults can pass FBTs but continue to have impaired performance on implicit FBTs - Autistic individuals needed to experiece the situation before they were able to pass them
Suggests that the cognitive processes behind explicit and implicit FBTs are different
Adults still have an impaired ToM to some degree - it’s more focussed on a defecit in cognitive empathy

Question 7

Bos and Stokes (2018)

Answer 7

Cognitive empathy is required in order for affective empathy to be demonstrated

Question 8

Burnel et al (2018)

Answer 8

Knowledge access tasks (E.G. The smarties task may be measuring language ability as opposed to ToM)