Conducting ToM research in autistic adults initially required changes to measures given to children that produced ceiling effects in adults (e.g., false belief tasks; Frith
1994). Therefore, ‘advanced’ measures were created to measure adults’ ability to reason about mental states in more complex contexts. The widely-used Strange Stories task (Happé
1994), for example, requires participants to infer false beliefs of characters in verbal vignettes, while the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RMET; Baron-Cohen et al.
2001) requires matching static images of the eye with mental state words. These are considered ‘explicit’ measures as ToM is prompted by direct mental state questions. Despite their popularity and usefulness in advancing autism research (e.g., genetic aetiology; Warrier et al.
2017), there is growing awareness of the limitations of these ‘classical’ ToM tasks. IQ, for example, is highly correlated with performance on the Strange Stories task and the RMET (e.g., Baker et al.
2014). Accordingly, some individuals’ ToM ability is under-estimated due to verbal impairments, whereas individuals with good verbal skills may compensate for ToM impairments and perform well on these tasks (Livingston and Happé
2017). In addition, recent work challenges whether these tasks measure ToM or emotion processing, leading to caution against their use in autistic adults with emotional difficulties (Oakley et al.
2016; Olderbak et al.
2015). In attempts to address some of these issues, ‘implicit’ ToM tasks have been used to probe automatic behavioural responses to scenarios that induce spontaneous ToM (see Apperly and Butterfill
2009 for overview). These include measuring participants’ eye movements while they view scenarios where agents hold false beliefs (e.g., Senju et al.
2009) or the extent to which participants spontaneously attribute mental states to animated triangles (e.g., White et al.
2011). The theory and methodology surrounding ‘implicit’ ToM is, however, also not without controversy. Its existence and distinction from ‘explicit’ ToM is currently debated (Carruthers
2017), particularly given claims that many ‘implicit’ ToM tasks measure general attentional processing, not ToM (e.g., Heyes
2014; Santiesteban et al.
2015). Overall, therefore, studies using classical measures of ToM to measure ToM in autistic adults are inconsistent (see Chung et al.
2014, for meta-analysis).
We will not dwell on conceptual and theoretical debates about classical ToM tasks, which can be found elsewhere in the literature (see Brewer et al.
2017, for recent discussion). Indeed, we suggest that a focus on classical tasks, and resulting debate, is stymieing development of novel methods, thereby constraining the clinical relevance of ToM research in autistic adults. This is highlighted by several findings that individuals with ASD show relatively minor impairments on classical tasks compared with their difficulties observed in clinical settings and everyday social situations (e.g., Begeer et al.
2010; Couture et al.
2010; Lever and Geurts
2016; Scheeren et al.
2013; Schneider et al.
2013; Spek et al.
2010; Wilson et al.
2014). This finding is often attributed to differences between laboratory and naturalistic settings, yet little is done to understand this discrepancy. Addressing this issue offers a good opportunity to study ToM using behavioural tasks with the aim of supporting autistic individuals with everyday social difficulties (see also, Fletcher-Watson et al.
2014). To this end, we direct the readers’ attention to recent developments in measuring ToM that have particularly clear potential for improving understanding and management of ASD.