Baron-cohen - Theory of mind

Neurodiversity

• Denotes variation in cognitive function

• neurodiversity movement → diversity of brain/minds is natural, health & valuable

• neurodivergence - brain that functions differently from what is typically considered typical

• neurominority - group who share the same divergence

common neurodivergence

•  1 in 7 people (more than 15% in the UK)

• Includes autism, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyslexia, dyscalculia

Why is neurodivergence important?

• a social issues → classified as a minority

  • face prejudice & discrimination from social majorities

  • experience, stigma, stereotyping & labelling

• biases/social barriers to inclusions

  • Detrimental to personal and professional well-being

Early approaches to Autism → Kanner (1943)

• first described autism

• child psychiatrists → reported 11 cases of children with unusual symptoms → Kanner Syndrome

• fundemtnal disorder is the children’s inability to relate themselves in the typical way to people & situations from the beginning

  • infantile autism (<3yrs)

    • usually low functioning w/ impaired intelligence

Early approaches to Autism →  Asperger (1944)

• Similar cases 4 children (Vienna) & conclusions to Kanner

• fundamental disorder of autistic individuals is the limitation of their social relationships

• Asperger autism 

  • Milder form of autism

  • Usually ‘high functioning

Early approaches to Autism → Kanner & Asperger commonalities

• Asperger’s & Kanner’s autism

  • Debate over commonalities in the two continue

  • General consensus: both define autism in relation to social interaction, communication, imagination

• Wing & Gould (1979) → examine presence of autism (as defined by Kanner & Asperger)

  • Findings → Large group of children 

    • difficulty with social interaction, communication, imagination (triad of impairments) & stereotyped activities 

DSM-V: Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD)

A. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction → Deficits

• social-emotional reciprocity

• nonverbal communicative behaviours used for social interaction

• developing/maintaining/understanding relationships

B. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities

• Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech

• Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines

• Highly restricted/fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

• Hyper/hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in sensory aspects of the environment

Baron-cohen → background

• No empirical evidence

  • to support biological basis for autism as presented by Asperger & Kanner

• Further developments → emphasis on environmental aspects

  • Bettelheim - ‘emotionless’ parenting causes autism

    • Refrigerator mother

      • Disproved & unfounded but high impact on parenting

• Cognitive revolution

  • Focus on perception, Memory, Language

    • nobody knows how to characterise (underlying cognitive) mechanisms of autism

Baron-cohen - background

• 1958 - born in london

• 1981 - B.A Hons Oxford

• 1988-1991 - Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London

• 1999 onwards - Director, Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge  

• 2007 - Professorial Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge 

• Numerous awards BPS, APABaron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985)

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → theory of mind

• theory of mind → ability to attribute mental states to others

  • allows us to think about why people do the things they do → helps predict behaviour

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → Firth

• children develop ToM at 2yrs

• associated with pretend play

• autistic children tended to have reduced capacity for pretend play

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → ToM & Autism

• Wimmer & Perner 1983

  • Paradigm for ToM used with young children (4yrs)

  • Child’s own belief is different from someone else’s belief

  • Child has to be aware that other people can have different beliefs about a situation

    • Capacity to conceive mental states (Dennett, 1978)

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → Participants

• 20 Autistic children (6-16 yrs old)

• 14 children with Down’s syndrome (6-17 yrs old)

• 27 typically developing children (3 – 6 yrs old)

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → procedure

• All participants did the Sally-Anne task

• followed by: 

  • False belief question (diagnostic) 

    • Where will Sally look for the marble?

  • Reality question (control) 

    • Where is the marble really?

  • Memory question (control)

    •  Where was the marble in the beginning?

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → findings

• Memory & Reality Questions

  • All children → correct responses

• False Belief Question

  • Down’s syndrome & ‘Normal’ →similar results

    • 85%/86% correct responses

  • Autistic → mostly failed the question

    • 80% failed

      • Autistic children pointed to where marble really was

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → conclusions

• selective impairment in ToM

  • independent of general intelligence

• children with ASD do not understand that sally will have a different belief → inability to represent mental state of others

• one of the first cognitive accounts of ASD

  • mindblindness hypothesis

mindblindness hypothesis

• autistic person have difficulty in ‘starting up’ dedicated neurocognitive mechanisms responsible for mind reading/theory of mind/mentalising

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → Tom doesn’t provide full account of autisms

• Tom only focuses on social features of autisms

  • Does not emphasise 

    • Restricted repertoire of interests

    • Insistence of sameness

    • Peaks of abilities (e.g., enhance rote memory)

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → additional cognitive accounts

• Executive dysfunction hypothesis

  • Ozonoff, Pennington & Rogers (1991)

• Weak central coherence 

  • Firth & Happé (1995)

Executive dysfunction hypothesis

• Difficulty in planning how to achieve goals 

• Tendency to become fixated on 1 activity or object

  • Stereotypes including repetitive actions & motor activities 

Weak central coherence

• Difficulty combining several pieces of information to form an overall understanding of the issues

  • Provides account for peaks & abilities

  • Detail-focused rather than holistic processing

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → alternative theory → monotropism

• Views mind as an ‘interest system’

  • all interested in many things & our interests help direct our attention

• Different interests → salient at different times

• Monotropic mind

  • fewer interests tend to be aroused at any time

  • attract more processing resources

    • Results in making it harder to deal with things outside attention tunnel

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → ToM deficit not specific to autism

• ToM deficits are also found in:

  • schizophrenia (Sprong et al., 2007)

  • unipolar & bipolar depression (Inoue et al., 2004) 

  • conduct disorders (Happé & Frith, 1996) 

  • right-hemisphere damage (Surian & Siegal, 2001) 

• Problematic if assuming a SINGLE explanation for Autism

  • Multiple characteristics associated with autism

  • Variations from person to person

  • Cannot look for ONE full explanation

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → Tom deficits not universal within autistic children

• not all Autistic children failed the Sally-Anne task in original → development of more sophisticated ToM tasks

• Baron-Cohen (1989)

  • Second-order FBTs (false-belief-tasks) 

    • P has to represent what someone thinks of what another person thinks

      • None of the children with autism passed this test but young Autistic adults succeed 

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → conclusions made from false belief task (FBT) study

• Autistic Individuals show delays in the development of ToM

  • Happé (1995) meta-analysis of 13 false belief

    • Neurotypical → pass at 3.62 years (minimum verbal mental age) 

    • ASD → pass at 5.5 years (minimum verbal mental age)

• Surface level performance should be distinguished from actual competence

  • Possibility that Autistic individuals who pass ToM tests use different cognitive strategies

    • Need advanced tests to distinguish between performance & competence

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → problems with interpretation FBT

• Typically developing children pass → Interpretation that they have ToM

• Autistic children/adults pass → interpretation that they use compensatory mechanisms

  • we need to devise a better test

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → alternative evidence → double empathy

• Milton’s double empathy problem → Found that if both autistic = easier for interaction

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → alternative evidence → Crompton & Fletcher-Watson (2019)

• Found that both Autistic & neurotypical people benefit from having an interaction partner with the same diagnostic status when performing an information transfer task

  • Autistic people share information with other Autistic people as effectively as non-autistic people do

  • Information sharing breaks down when pairs are mis-matched: from different neurotype

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → alternative evidence → Cullen et al

• empirical evidence that it is not a deficit but a different way of thinking 

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → alternative evidence → Social orientation hypothesis

Wang, Lee, Sigman & Dapretto, 2007

• irony comprehension in ASD

• Neutral (Pay close attention) vs Explicit Language (Play close attention to face and eyes)

• Activity in neural part of the brain associated with irony increased in explicit condition for ASD

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → attribution of mental state

Senju, Southgate, White & Frith, 2009

• Spontaneous attribution vs verbal instructions

• Performance improved with instructions 

• Performance in social tasks may not be determined by what p are able to do but what they are inclined to do

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → Social orientation

• Performance can be affected by 

  • Explicitness of instructions

  • Relevance of the social cue to solve the task

  • Intrinsic interest of the stimulus for the participant 

  • Primary deficit

    • Disturbance in the motivational & executive processes that prioritise orienting the social stimuli

  • Secondary deficit

    • Decreased expertise in social cognition & ToM is the results of primary deficit 

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → Impact on research areas

• Developmental psychology

• Philosophy of mind

• Pragmatics (linguistics)

• Cognitive science

• Deception

• Imitation

• Prosocial behaviour

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → scientific contributions

• Empathising-systemising (BAron-cohen 2009)

  • newer theory to account for non-social features

  • two dimensions of empathising & systemising

  • explains ASD best (E → low, S → average or +)

    • discrepancy between E & S determines whether likely autistic

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → new evidence

• Empathising-systemising & extreme male brain theories

  • led to myth that autistic people lack empathy

  • there is no empirical evidence for gendered brain

Baron-Cohen, leslie & Frith (1985) → applied contributions

• Insight into cognitive processes underlying autism

• Inspired development of ways of looking at Autistic children and adults → NeuroDiversity

• Social acceptance 

What is a second order false-belief task?

a task when a participant has to represent what someone thinks of what another person think

How does Baron-cohen explain autism (mindblindness)

a difficulty in starting up neurocognitive mechanisms that allow inferring someone else’s mental state

Mindblindness

• refers to difficulty understanding the mental states of others, including beliefs, desires, emotions, & intentions.

• associated with autism spectrum disorders

  • leading to challenges in social interactions & forming relationships due to struggles with theory of mind.