Theory of mind

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How can I tell for sure if I lack a theory of mind? Is there a way I can tell for definite without going to a professional if its a lack of theory of mind or just simply lack of social skills or something? I definately do not have a social phobia though, I dont give a toss what I do or say in public or how people perceive it...I care about people but I just dont care about what they think of me in any way and im totally comfortable and content with myself.

THis is a great thread and I don't know why it has not garnered more attention.

THeory of mind is very important. It allows people to get along!

Not many people practice it, let alone asp's.

It's where a Muslim is free to worship as he pleases without getting verbally pounded by a fundy. It's where a CHristian is allowed to pray in public without harrassment. It's where you compeltely understand that another person has, at every step of life, had different expereinces and different pivotal moments that make him or her who she is.

It's not political correctness. It's just correctness.


If you don't understand why a person dislikes something and try to talk them into lking it or vice versa, you don not get it.

It's letting other people have their own thoughts, ideas , likes a nd dislikes.

Of course, if you do ths, you may think yo uare becomming a pansie. But relaly you are becomming a great thinker and respector of persons.

Sorry for my grammar. My compuer has a tiny keyboard and it is hard to type on it.

Surely theory of mind, at its most basic, is simply the ability to know that other people have a different mind from yours. This fact, to me, is logical and obvious. Therefore, I have theory of mind. And most autistic/aspie people I know have it too. I am very suspicious of the idea that people on the autistic spectrum don't have it. I think the so-called experts are basing their ideas on external behaviours and not really understanding what goes on in our minds.

For me, what happens is this: when I am talking to someone, I can't multitask. I can't concentrate both on what they are thinking and what I am thinking. This is impossible for me. But this doesn't mean that I am not aware, logically, that this person has a different mind from mine.

I am aware others have different thoughts from me and how their life experiences could have shaped them but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to recognize their beliefs as asinine.

I am aware others don't think the same as me, they like different things, have their own dislikes, etc. I struggled with it growing up. I didn't even know I was struggling, I thought other people were just being weird. How can they not like something I like? How can people not know what I know? How can they not remember the things I remember? I didn't even know how others would feel about things. I remember not knowing these two girls weren't my friend anymore because they never wanted to play. All I saw was they didn't want to play when I would come over. A normal 11 year old would figure out, 'they don't want to play with me because they don't like me' and stop coming over. My mother had to tell me to stop going over there because they do not want to play with me anymore. I didn't understand why they didn't want to play with me anymore. Now I only have guesses why and I assume they probably didn't like me anymore.

See, I think that is quite normal, due to the fact that our brains work very differently from NTs. They also don't understand the way our minds work and think some of our views are asinine. I think part of the difficulty is that we are the minority, so when we don't understand the odd minds of NTs it is seen as a disability. The fact that they don't understand our minds, however, is seen as our fault for being so odd!

I think Theory of Mind is basically the assumption that everyone else is just like you. (I could be completely wrong though)

It allows people to internally work out 'if I say X, the person I'm talking to will react by doing/saying Y'. For most NTs this is the case. Social rules and etiquette further serve to homogenise human responses (or as a friend of mine put it: 'everybody's trying to act normal') and the whole system of cogs keeps turning...

I have a hard time believing other people are like me (just from experience) and so start from scratch with every person I meet, working out how they react in situations from trial and error. I have to treat people like a behaviouralist, making mental notes of likes and dislikes.

Sometimes I think my ToM isn't actually that bad, it's just that I don't trust it (relying instead on rules that I learnt as a kid), and usually it doesn't kick in until after a social encounter has already occured.

On the bright side, not having an automatic assumption that everyone is like you, means that a person is less likely to mis-judge someone from another culture or who sees the world differently. If everyone is odd and unusual, then what's different about that?

Have you ever experienced contagious laughter or contagious yawning? If a bunch of people were looking up at the sky would you look in their direction to see what they are looking at? Can you empathize with another? If you answered no to these then you probably lack theory of mind.

I actually constantly assume that other people will act the way that I would have acted in their shoes and if they do not, it means there is something wrong with them because the way I would have acted is the 'right' way.

I'm only really starting to realize this since I've been learning about AS and being on this forum. But I spent most of my life being terribly hurt by others who didn't treat me the way I treated them.

Lene, I think you got it backwards, I think its supposed to be that NT's realize everyone is individual and Autistics who think everyone is like them.

I understand that people think differently that me-I just don't understand why. I am a logical person (well except when I'm on emotion overload) I don't understand if I come to a logical conclusion about something, someone else won't come to the same logical conclusion, or for that matter why they come to a seemingly (to me-I'm giving the benifit of doubt in case I'm wrong)illogical conclusion but won't back it up with logic if it's so logical.

I've met other people that have had a diffent opinion from me, that have when questioned given me a logical explaination that's helped me come to the conclusion that in this instance they had more information than me, and that with the information I had my conclusion was logical, and given their information so was their....so why don't others do this, why do the refuse to back up their opinion or change it in the face of logic?

I can relate to this.

NT's realize that we are all different, and I think aspies also know this intellectually. But NT's expect certain behavior following a given situation as much if not more so than aspies who have their own theory of mind.

For example, look at any advice column in a magazine. A person asks a question about a relationship problem and the columnist tells them how that person should act. Aspies do things for different reasons, and sometimes for no apparent reason. Aspies are impossible to understand and their behavior often defies logic because most people wouldn't act as they do under similar circumstances...and vice versa sometimes.

yeah, I think I might have... sorry!

And thus we are expected to have more empathy than the typical NT.....

I think theory of mind is a little more complex and involves perceiving that other people actually have a 'mind' and don't just think and reason kind of reflex-like. The term 'mind' is not just 'thinking'. We all recognize that others think and reason and have beliefs and emotions but can we relate to their imagination or even wonder about what they might be imagining at any given point in time.

Ooh, this one is easy.

Get two people and two boxes and a button. Have the one firend put the button under box number one then have them leave the room -the second person comes in and switches the button to box number two. Person one comes back in and you have to guess which box they will look under.

This is called the 'sally-ann' test and therepists have been useing it for years.

My theory of mind is kinda shaky because I can clear the test but I get mad at people for not knowing things that I know.

Yes, apparently - but I don't think the NTs realise they have imposing this impossible expectation on us!

I think it's true what others are saying that it is more of an intellectual awareness for us, and we don't always feel what the other person is feeling (although again I'd say that is partly because NTs are so different from us that we really have no idea how to imagine what it is like to be them! And partly because we think of one thing at a time, so when we are concentrating on what is going on in our own heads, we can't concentrate on other people's minds being different.).

But, this lack of feeling or constant awareness is not what theory of mind is about. Theory of mind, as it is described by psychologists, is purely about theory - we know, theoretically, that other people have different minds from ours, even though we can't actually experience what it's like to be those people. So it is an intellectual awareness. Hence, we can understand the Sally Ann test in theory, once we understand what it is asking of us. So whatever it is that makes us different in the way we relate to others, I really don't think it is about theory of mind.