social cognition- theory of mind

Question 1

theory of mind ToM

Answer 1

the ability to understand what others are thinking or feeling

Question 2

ToM impairment consequences

Answer 2

autism
social deficits
Asperger’s syndrome

Question 3

autism

Answer 3

may have a deficit of ToM and be unable to understand other people’s emotions or even comprehend that people may have different emotions to themselves

leads to impairments in empathy, social communications and social imagination

Question 4

social deficits

Answer 4

lack of understanding that behaviour impacts how other think and feel

issues differentiating fact from fiction which is characterised by poor performance on false-belief tasks such as the Sally-Anne task

Question 5

Sally-Anne task procedure summary

Answer 5

participants asked to identify where they thought Sally would look for her marble after it had been moved without her knowledge

Question 6

Sally-Anne task sample

Answer 6

control group- 14 downs syndrome + 27 neurotypical

experimental group- autistic

Question 7

Sally-Anne task results

Answer 7

85% of control group answered correctly

20% of autistic group answered correctly

Question 8

Sally-Anne task conclusion

Answer 8

supports idea that autistic children are unable to understand that people can believe something that is not true
this also explains another trait of autism: difficulties predicting the behaviour and mental states of others

Question 9

Asperger’s syndrome

Answer 9

adults with Asperger’s syndrome perform well on false belief tasks, however struggle with ‘the eyes task’

meaning that they still suffer from ToM deficits, they just need to be tested in a different way

Question 10

the eyes task

Answer 10

participants must identify the emotion displayed by a character by only their eyes