Theory of Mind

 

Theory of Mind is the understanding that other people have minds different from our own. It is the ability to attribute mental states such as feelings, thoughts, opinions, beliefs and intentions to others in order to understand social behaviour. This enables one to predict the behaviour of others in a social interaction.

This skill starts developing in infancy where it takes the form of joint attention skills. Joint attention skills comprise of the ability to jointly attend to an object of interest. It includes the ability to point towards an object of interest (initiate) or to look towards the point of another person (respond). Joint attention can be both social (social sharing and referencing) or non-social (pointing to ask for something).

Joint attention starts developing in infancy around 8-9 months of age and by the time the child is around 5 years of age, he/she should have developed a fair understanding of other people’s minds.

This ability includes many skills – interpreting emotion for voice intonation, from the expression in the eyes and face, from the situational context and from the content of the words being said.

Individuals on the autism spectrum struggle to make sense of other people’s minds. Their Theory of Mind ability is greatly underdeveloped. While it is not an all or nothing concept, each individual on the spectrum will have some degree of difficulty with it. They struggle to understand the motivation, emotion or intention of a person’s actions. It is often for this reason that they seek predictability in their day-to-day interactions. For the same reason, they also struggle to understand why they need to behave in certain ways in a given situation.

Some of the examples of the difficulties they face can include –

·       The ability to spontaneously report what happened at school once they return home.

·       The ability to play pretend games.

·      The ability to change their behaviour according to context – soft voice in classroom vs loud voice on the playground

·      This can result in social gaffes for example like a child who has previously seen a relative pass away after a hospitalization, asked a person he was visiting in the hospital if his death was imminent.

While the understanding of other people’s minds does not come in instinctively to an individual on the autism spectrum, it can be taught. Many individuals have either average or above average cognitive abilities. This cognitive strength can be used to teach them to interpret expressions and understand social situations. They will need to attain language skills of at least a 5 year old before they can be taught.

Teaching Theory of Mind skills can be done in the following stages-

·       Recognition of emotions.

·       Understanding of various situations which lead to the basic emotional states.

·       Understanding of Visual Perspectives.

·       Understanding of Situational Perspectives.

·       Inferencing from pictures.

·       Making inferences from reading.