ToM

Question 1

what is ToM

Answer 1

ability to attribute mental states - beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge etc - to oneself and others

Question 2

ToM links to autism behaviours

Answer 2

ascribing mentla states, lack of pretend play
social and cog imapirments e.g. lack of reciprocity
cohen says autistics undergo specific metarepresentational delay causing mindblindness

Question 3

precursors to ToM

Answer 3

habituation tasks, shared attention, imitation and pretend play

Question 4

brain areas in ToM

Answer 4

paracingulate cortex and medial frontal cortex are key areas for mentalising.
STS and temporal poles are associated.
amygdal is inv with emotions and interpreting behaviour

Question 5

main arguments against ToM in autism

Answer 5

Normal children acquire ToM at age of 4 years, but autism starts earlier. (Baron-Cohen: precursors such as Shared attention Mechanism)2. Real problem is socio-affective (lack of empathy). Hobson (psychoanalyst).3. The non-social symptoms can’t be explained by ToM.

Question 6

alternative theories to ToM

Answer 6

Deficit in executive functions (planning, inhibition, working-memory, attention switching).3. Deficit in global processing: Central-coherence (or preference for local processing).4. Deficit in imitation (malfunctioning mirror-neuron system).

Question 7

evidence of imitation deficit in autism

Answer 7

Some difficulties in copying others’ actions (especially meaningless actions: echopraxia).2. Problems in inhibiting stereotyped mimicking of words or phrases (echolalia), or actions (e.g. a peculiar way of walking).Thus there are issues with imitation in ASD, but not necessarily a reduction of imitation!

Both involve translating the perspective of another to oneself.2. The link becomes especially clear in Simulation Theory.3. Imitation could be precursor to ToM.