Understanding photos, models, and beliefs: A test of the modularity thesis of theory of mind

doi:10.1016/0885-2014(95)90013-6

Cognitive Development

Volume 10, Issue 2, April–June 1995, Pages 287-298

https://doi.org/10.1016/0885-2014(95)90013-6 Get rights and content

Abstract

Recent experimental findings suggest that there is a dissociation between the performance by children with autism on False Belief tasks, on which they do poorly, and False Photograph, False Maps, and False Drawing tasks, on which they do well. This may be because only the False Belief task taps the capacity for metarepresentation, at least as defined by Leslie and Thaiss (1992). In an attempt to test the modularity of this capacity further, the performance of participants with autism on DeLoache's (1987, 1991) Model and Photograph tasks (which test understanding of the symbolic function of models and photographs), and on a standard False Belief task, was compared to that of mental handicap controls. The majority of participants from both groups passed the Photograph and Model tasks, and on neither task were there group differences. However, participants with mental handicap were significantly more successful on the False Belief task than those with autism. These results provide further support for the modularity of theory of mind, and the specificity of the metarepresentational deficit in autism.

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Prior work had found a single dissociation between intuitive physics and psychology in the case of ASD, where ASD individuals show a selective impairment in intuitive psychology, but not intuitive physics. For example, individuals with ASD show impaired performance on false belief tasks, but not comparable false photo, model, or map tasks (Charman & Baron-Cohen, 1995; Leslie & Thaiss, 1992); picture sequencing tasks based on psychological states, but not causal-mechanical states (Baron-Cohen et al., 1986); tasks requiring participants to perceive mental states in pictures of the eye region of the face, but not multiple choice folk physics tests (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001), and self-report questionnaires measuring “empathizing” (i.e., how we understand and predict the social world, analogous to intuitive psychology), but not on comparable questionnaires measuring “systemizing” (i.e., how we understand and predict the inanimate universe, analogous to intuitive physics) (Baron-Cohen, Richler, Bisarya, Gurunathan, & Wheelwright, 2003). Critically, however, this single dissociation leaves open the possibility that both intuitive physics and psychology draw on a more general system (e.g., for causal reasoning), and that intuitive psychology tasks simply involve more complex reasoning than intuitive physics tasks.
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Theory of Mind (ToM) is a term coined to describe people's effortless propensity to search for intentions behind actions. ToM research began with primates in 1978 and continues in humans to investigate both the developmental stages of skills involving the ability to understand other's mental states − infants (7 months old) compute other's beliefs − and its brain basis. Research on ToM has always overlapped with research on autism. Findings indicate that individuals with autism have a diminished cognitive awareness of their own and others' mental states, and their brain connectivity in a multicomponents network is disrupted in different areas.
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Successful communication requires that individuals attend to the perspective of their conversational partners and use this information to modify their behavior accordingly. This paper presents a framework by which to understand children’s communicative perspective-taking skills and, within this framework, outlines three routes by which children’s communicative perspective-taking performance can be disrupted. First, children may have difficulty in communicative contexts due to deficits in mentalizing ability whereby they are unable to appreciate another’s perspective. Second, children may have intact mentalizing abilities but do not have the cognitive skills to support the use of this information when generating communicative behaviors. Third, decreased social exposure may lead to exacerbated deficits in either mentalizing ability or the use of mentalistic information within communicative contexts. Patterns within both typical and atypical populations (i.e., autism, ADHD, and mood disorders) are reviewed.
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Conflicting evidence has arisen from correlational studies regarding the role of executive control functions in Theory of Mind. The current study used dual-task manipulations of executive functions (inhibition, updating and switching) to investigate the role of these control functions in mental state and non-mental state tasks. The ‘Eyes’ pictorial test of Theory of Mind showed specific dual-task costs when concurrently performed with an inhibitory secondary task. In contrast, interference effects on a verbal ‘Stories’ task were general, occurring on both mental state and non-mental state tasks, and across all types of executive function. These findings from healthy functioning adults should help to guide decisions about appropriate methods of assessing ToM in clinical populations, and interpreting deficits in performance in such tasks in the context of more general cognitive dysfunction.

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Understanding photos, models, and beliefs: A test of the modularity thesis of theory of mind

Abstract

Advances in Child Development and Behaviour

Trends in Neuroscience

Cognition

Cognition

Cognition

Cognition

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Autism and symbolic play

British Journal of Developmental Psychology

The autistic child's theory of mind: A case of specific developmental delay

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

Precursors to a theory of mind: Understanding attention in others

From attention-goal psychology to desire-belief psychology: The development of a theory of mind and its dysfunction

How to build a baby that can read minds: Cognitive mechanisms in mindreading

Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive (Current Psychology of Cognition)

A model of the Mindreading system: Neuropsychological and neurobiological perspectives

Recognition of mental state terms: A clinical study of autism, and a functional neuroimaging study of normal adults

British Journal of Psychiatry

The Test for Reception of Grammar

Young children's ability to understand a model as a spatial representation

The Journal of Genetic Psychology

Understanding drawings and beliefs: A further test of the metarepresentation theory of autism: A research note

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

The emergence of developmental psychopathology

Child Development