Do adults with Asperger syndrome really have ToM??

[sukurux]

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People with autism are known to lack the ability to automatically attribute mental states to self and others also known as "mindblindness". A result of this impairment is failure on verbally instructed false-belief tasks. However, people with Asperger syndrome, a milder form of autism, seem to pass with flying colors. This presents a problem for the "mindblindness" theory. So do people with Asperger syndrome really have a theory of mind (ToM) contrary to popular theory?

Senju, Southgate, White, and Frith decided to take it upon themselves to sort out this confusion. Instead of using verbal instructions, they had adults with Asperger syndrome perform an eye-tracking task that measured the spontaneous ability to mentalize. This entailed subjects to view a scene of an actor first placing a ball into one of two boxes, then having a puppet move the ball to the alternative box unbeknownst to the distracted actor, thus causing a false belief in the actor about the location of the ball. Results showed that the Asperger group showed significantly less looking bias toward the correct window compared to a control group indicating the Asperger group's inability to spontaneously anticipate others' actions in a nonverbal task. It seems that to a certain extent they do lack a ToM. But then how are they able to pass the verbally instructed false-belief task? The authors suggest that compensatory learning is involved.

Any thoughts about weaknesses or strengths of this study?

Senju A, Southgate V, White S, & Frith U (2009). Mindblind Eyes: An Absence of Spontaneous Theory of Mind in Asperger Syndrome. Science (New York, N.Y.) PMID: 19608858

 

[krisrox]

People with autism are known to lack the ability to automatically attribute mental states to self and others also known as "mindblindness". A result of this impairment is failure on verbally instructed false-belief tasks. However, people with Asperger syndrome, a milder form of autism, seem to pass with flying colors. This presents a problem for the "mindblindness" theory. So do people with Asperger syndrome really have a theory of mind (ToM) contrary to popular theory?

Senju, Southgate, White, and Frith decided to take it upon themselves to sort out this confusion. Instead of using verbal instructions, they had adults with Asperger syndrome perform an eye-tracking task that measured the spontaneous ability to mentalize. This entailed subjects to view a scene of an actor first placing a ball into one of two boxes, then having a puppet move the ball to the alternative box unbeknownst to the distracted actor, thus causing a false belief in the actor about the location of the ball. Results showed that the Asperger group showed significantly less looking bias toward the correct window compared to a control group indicating the Asperger group's inability to spontaneously anticipate others' actions in a nonverbal task. It seems that to a certain extent they do lack a ToM. But then how are they able to pass the verbally instructed false-belief task? The authors suggest that compensatory learning is involved.

Any thoughts about weaknesses or strengths of this study?

Senju A, Southgate V, White S, & Frith U (2009). Mindblind Eyes: An Absence of Spontaneous Theory of Mind in Asperger Syndrome. Science (New York, N.Y.) PMID: 19608858

I know nothing about the study specifically, but I do know that it is not uncommon for individuals with ASD to lack ToM. Although the lack of ToM itself is not a definable characteristic of ASD, other studies have shown that only about half of individuals with ASD do possess this type of ToM (which is an example of first-order false belief).

 

[FadedC]

My mentor believed that theory of mind is a skill that people can have in greater or less amounts, and not something that you either absolutely have or are absolutely lacking. Older children with autism often can pass "easy" theory of mind tasks that they might have failed previously, but still have difficulties with more complicated ones. It's also often thought that some children with autism might be able to reason their way through a theory of mind task even if it's not instinctive to them. Presumably adults would be even better at that.

Personally I'd argue that even typically developing adults have varying ability in theory of mind. Some people are really good at figuring out what conclusion somebody else would reach and some really aren't.