1. Theory of Mind and the Self by: Francesca Happe
Group 5:
Hans, Joey, Sumanth, Tim

2. Outline Theory of mind and the self
Theory of own mind and theory of other minds
Autism-a disorder of “Theory of Mind”
fMRI studies of Theory of Mind and self-reflection

3. What is ToM?
Theory of mind refers to the everyday ability to attribute independent mental states to self and others in order to predict or explain behavior
These thoughts are normal for social interaction:
Example: we make sense of people’s behavior via belief-desire psychology
It’s easy to explain why Jon will carry an umbrella with him, because believes it will rain and wants to stay dry
It’s basically thinking of thinking

4. Cognitive Processes of ToM
Some favor a more general explanation
Simulation, general theory building
Others argue for the necessity of a dedicated cognitive mechanism
Innate mechanism: supported by a relative lack of normal individual difference or cross-cultural variation, and an acquisition of ToM early in childhood
They also mention that even though it is innate, it needs triggering input, like social interactions
Talk about possibility of both, a bag of tricks (building on existing knowledge), There is a theory theory that states that kids build up evidence from their environment through gestures and expressions and use their everyday understanding of people to develop theories that help them explain actions by other people (seems to support general theory building) [Gallese]… it starts from mom pointing to things and how you two interact that all builds to a ToM
Simulation: you perceive other people’s actions as your own, through simulation, you simulate what you would have done in that situation and how you would have felt… mirror neurons are thought to be inolved in this simulation process.

5. Testing ToM The litmus test
Attributing false beliefs
Where prediction and explanation of action cannot be based simply on the state of the world
To pass the test, one must keep particular beliefs of another person separate from their own beliefs

6. Testing Continued
Children are tested at only 3-4 and older due to the high verbal and executive task demands
Sally-Anne Task
A location change task
Smarties Task
A content change task
This doesn’t mean that they don’t have a theory of mind when younger, but difficult to see, but there are instances of tracking other’s intentions, but it is difficult to test.
Sally has a box with a marble in it, Anne has a basket. Sally leaves to go out for a walk, while she is away, Anne takes the marble and puts it into her basket. Sally comes back and wants to play with her marble, where will she look for it? People with a ToM will say she will look in her box (they separate her thoughts from their own and are able to make a conclusion), people without will say that it is in the basket where it really is
The experimenter asks the kid what is in the container, the kids says smarties and the experimenter reveals that there is a pencil in the container. Now they ask what Billy will think is in the container when he comes into the room.
There is a cutoff for Theory of other people’s beliefs, but not for theory for other people’s intentions since there have been instances of earlier children doing this.
Additionally, when asked what they initially believed, children younger than 4, without a ToM, often say that they thought it was a pencil instead of smarties
Wanted more information about studies

7. Theory of Own Mind and Theory of Other Mind
Are the same mechanisms involved for ToM and ToOM?
There are different input channels
But it is crucial to distinguish mental states from representations of reality
Keeping reality separate from belief

8. Theory of Other’s Minds
For example: it’s necessary to distinguish the represenations of the reality that “there is a pencil in the tube” from the representation of belief that, I “thought there are sweets in the tube”
From here we can postulate that the same mechanism involved in keeping mental states separate from reality does not change depending if these states are you “own” states or others’ states

9. Leslie (1987)
He suggested that understanding of pretense in infancy demonstrates the availability of a special form of representation for mental states
He describes that there is a separation between first-order representations and meta-representations of real world states
Meta-representation is necessary to attribute mental states
For example, a child won’t get confused when his or her mother holds a banana to her ear. The primary representation is in seeing his mother holding the banana to her ear, but the meta-representation is attributing her mental state to the situation, as pretend play

10. ToOM
Underlying our social understanding must be representations that capture who is thinking what and in what sense they are thinking it
When children are able to report their mental state, they are also able to report the mental states of others

11. Autism
Autistic children seem to lack the ability to attribute mental states
These children also lack pretend play
This observation led researchers to believe meta-representation may be impaired and cannot conceptualize mental states; thus ToM deficits

12. Autism
It is important to note that these individuals do not lack mental states, but are unable to reflect on their own mental states.
Asperger Syndrome are almost as good as controls when it comes to the more basic theory of mind tasks.

13. Autism Baron-Cohen (1993) Method: 2 groups 16 (high functioning + ASP)
16 (controls)
Matched gender/age
Basically a fill in the last box of a comic exp

14. Baron-Cohen Results A character intention (CI) condition
A physical causality (PC)
The ASP did much better in the PC condition than in the CI condition. (p<0.001)
ASP did as well as controls in the false-belief tasks.

15. Autism and ToM
It is easy to study lack of ToM regarding other peoples mindstates.
However, it is hard to evaluate in experimental situations the inability of autistics to know their own mindstate.
What kind of experiments can you do in the future?

16. Weak Central Coherence Theory
The limited ability to see the context and the big picture.
The theory tries to explain why Autistics have skills in some areas.
The contention is that Autistics may not see the bigger picture but they see details pretty well.
Tested for theory of mind tasks.

17. Results
The paper summarized other experiments and results.

18. Results Frontal Lobe -Planning -Working Memory -Binding -Interpreter?
Amygdala
-Emotional Learning
-Problem with this experiment
Anterior Cingulate
-NOT lit up with autistic people
All experiments showed increased blood flow in the frontal lobe. Many activities involved with interpreting stimuli, the external world. Seven of the eight saw medial frontal blood flow and some regions of the temporal. The Amygdala may have lit up because the stimuli being shown was face stimuli which may have elicited emotional responses. ACC involved when effort is needed to carry out task (early learning, problem solving). Also involved error detection, anticipation of tasks, motivation, modulation of emotional responses.

19. Results
1) The same areas activated when subjects reflected on their own inner states
-there is a overlap of brain networks
2) Baseline minds are introspective
3) Areas of ToM that are activated were not the same areas where mirror neurons are typically found.
Makes sense, the brain uses overlapping areas all the time. fMRI hard to pinpoint exactness of brain areas. Studies show that maybe minds not attending to external stimuli naturally turn in upon themselves, reflecting upon internal states. Perhaps mirror neurons facilitate learning through imitation and may provice a precursor to the development of ToM.

20. Where To Go From Here What else can we find out?
-Look for people with brain lesions
-Find individuals who can report on own mental states but not others
-vice versa
Living on a prayer. VERY VERY hard to do as studies show these two networks are very much linked.

21. Where To Go From Here Why do we have a ToM? -Fitness Advantages
-Evolved from humans being social creatures
-Do animals have ToM?
-Learning
Anticipating the toughts of competitors and cooperators allows us to make better decisions. Evolutionarily built to help us interact with each other. Do other animals have ToM? What do you think? Koko with the cat? Perhaps ToM allows us to create goals/emotional responses based on seeing others (mom).

22. Where To Go From Here Does ToM always keep going?
-ToM gets more accurate the more social situations we are placed in
-Why old people are senile?
-Is there a plateau?
As we get older we participate in more social activities thus making our ToM more accurate. As we get older do we keep learning about other people or is there a plateau we reach at some point? Can you fully understand the world?

23. Where To Go From Here Is ToM innate? Is ToOM innate? Which came first?
We learn to analyze other people first and then turned onto ourselves. Self reflection is a side effect of reading other people’s minds.