Theory of Mind and autism spectrum

When we witness any activity or sequence of activities carried out by a person or group of people in general tend to assign any meaning.

We are inclined to explain the behavior of others so that we are consistent and give some continuity to the future of the actions of others and the discourse of our own thoughts.

Some specialists say that we are born human and that makes us competent to deal with the opacity of the behavior of others.

Others will argue that it is the interaction itself in areas of shared experience, the very intersubjective dimension, which enables us to become skilled mentalists.

But both do not deny that our communicative activity and our relationship would be severely affected if the competition fails.

Good or bad readers of the actions or interactions of others, we are finally, compulsive readers.

Actions, gestures, faces, looks, talks, are royal roads to attribute and decipher the intent that underlies them.

What is it that some people are more adept than others to make these readings?

What happens others are just rookies or do not succeed in reading or are "illiterate" or "blind" to these individuals 'graphics', 'doodles' and 'drawings' mind?

Participate in the following assumption: human actions are guided by representations, beliefs and desires.

We assume interiority our fellow isomorphic with our own interiority.

We have a world of experience that could be shared with our peers.

Early on shared experiences.

Share emotional experiences or discuss who converses with another person, who shows him a picture or a poem you love, or a couple when you look in the eye and creates a world.

It also shares experiences a baby that her mother drew an object to show it with gestures we call proto (Belinchón Igoa and Rivière, 1992).

With lower or higher level of complexity, all who share experiences, necessarily attributed to the other a world of experience.

What sense would it make if not the fact to share?

It is true that what appears as obvious and natural light can give us the false idea-that implies an easy and simple.

But in truth, the complexity involved human communications, successive and multiple insights and / or inferences that are made in each activity interpersonal demands of us a set of skills that allow us to enter the mental worlds of others and themselves.

It is precisely the "inner eye" of which we speak Humphrey (1986), the "mental eye" referred to by Rivière and Núñez (1996), which opens the possibilities to reveal the opacity of the behavior of others, "read" their minds, organize the chaos in which we would throw the "mental blindness" (Baron Cohen, 1,995).

It allows us to give some interpretation to the behavior of people and make predictions about their courses of action.

Convinced that they have desires, beliefs, intentions.

A world of emotions and experiences.

There are psychologists who seek to understand human behavior, to explain why people do what they do in the way it does and predict what people will do in the future, what plans will continue, what strategies will be implemented.

Astington (1.993: 2) states that in that sense we are all psychologists.

For its part, says Humphrey (1.986): "Fifteen years ago in any textbook that discuss the issue of human evolution is referred to the need for man to do psychology: only spoke of building tools, the release dart and light the fire: that is, a social practice rather than intelligence.

It is significant appointment, first because it reveals that the interests of some students of human evolution is directed toward other fields involved in the development of interpersonal skills and theory of mind, and secondly, because averaging the year 2.000 are many studies about the development of mentalistic abilities and deficits resulting from their disorder (Baron Cohen, 2.000th).

Theory of Mind

Carruthers and Smith (1.996) place as a starting point the work of developmental psychologists about the theory of mind, the famous passage of primatology Premack and Woodruff (1.978), which raises the question of whether chimpanzees have a theory of mind.

So this question paradoxical view another set of equally trivial matters: what is called Theory of Mind?

And what about humans?

It will be obvious question about the capabilities of those mentalists who prototypically is predicated mind? (Rivière, 1.991).

In any case, is an ability "natural" or a "theory" made about other people and yourself?

0r a combination of both positions?

The question of chimpanzees respond Rivière (1997th: 6) when he states that in any case, to possess, his would be a "chimpanzee theory of mind."

That is, why would chimpanzees share the theory of the human mind?.

The initial question may have been certainly anthropocentric, but has opened a fruitful discussion space.

This discussion is far from closed.

In fact, although some authors are cautious about attributing a theory of mind in chimpanzees, do not doubt that some way to explain about their behavior.

De Waal, in a quote picked up by Baron Cohen (1,995, 124) notes that the critical role of eye contact among chimpanzees is a feature in common with humans.

Among the apes, is a prerequisite for reconciliation.

It is as if the chimpanzees did not trust the intentions of others until you look into his eyes.

Something similar happens to humans if we try to establish a rapport with a person, he or she look at the floor or turn their eyes toward the ceiling.

Under the mental model of reading Baron Cohen, the "intentionality detector '(ID) and" Eye Direction Detector "(EDD) function in many primates and allow them to interpret the behavior of other animals in terms of goals and desires.

In what is no evidence that the 'Shared Care Facility "(SAM) and the" Mechanism Theory of Mind "(TOMM) are also present in these primates.

What is the TOMM and what their specific function in humans?

Mechanism Theory of Mind (TOMM), whose name comes from the work of Alan Leslie (1,987, 1,994) - a system to infer the full range of mental states from behavior, ie, to use a theory of mind "(Baron Cohen, 1995: 51).

Such a theory of mind includes much more than reading behavior in terms of desires and intentions, reading eye in terms of perceptual mental states or mental states sharing about an object.

TOMM is the way to represent the set of epistemic mental states (such as simulation, think, think, learn, dream, imagine, cheat, guess) and relate all mental states, perceptive, volitional and epistemic-with actions to build a consistent theory and useful (Baron Cohen offers a comprehensive review of experiments judged as evidence of the different mechanisms proposed.

The mention of that body of empirical work beyond the scope of this paper).

Humans are, for Dennett, intentional systems.

Throughout our evolutionary history we started asking ourselves if the tiger wanted to eat, to keep asking-animistic perspective, if the rivers reach the seas wanted or what we wanted to thank the clouds as rain that we had asked and were granted (1,996: 33).

The key feature of the intentional stance (intentional stance) is to treat an entity as an agent, attributing beliefs and desires to try to predict their actions.

To Humphrey (1986), the best way to characterize humans is Homo psicologicus.

His ability to interpret behavior in terms of mental states of an agent is the result of a long evolution.

Faced with the term "theory of mind", one might ask: why a "theory"? Perner (1.991), to characterize the mind, using three criteria: the inner experience, the intentionality (aboutness) and the theoretical explanations of behavior.

With regard to the latter, he argues that mental states play a "explanatory role in our common sense psychology of behavior.

When we try to explain or predict the behavior of others and their own use such theoretical constructs, ie elaborated a theory of mind of others and ours.

Perner himself says that perhaps the theory label is not the best, but it is a way to "observable" and likely to be studying something that until now belonged to the realm of inner experience.

To WeIlman (1990) our use of common mental terms, our everyday assumptions of other thoughts and methods we use to evaluate our thoughts and those of others have a base in structures reminiscent of the theoretical explanations of science.

The terms "Theory of Mind", "folk psychology", "intuitive psychology", "mentalistic" are used by some authors as equivalent (Baron Cohen, 2.000b).

To address child development knowledge about people with their mental states, Hobson (1991) prefers to use other theoretical explanations.

It is suggested that is more appropriate for psychologists, think in terms of how children acquire an understanding of the nature of people and a concept or set of concepts about the minds of people.

This children's understanding is far from being a "theory" not only by the characteristics of such knowledge, but also by their mode of acquisition.

The child-theory is conceived as an isolated being, a subject almost "exclusively cognitive one on which it is easy to apply the" computer metaphor.

Hobson's thesis is that the child acquires knowledge about the nature of the people through the experience affective interpersonal relationships.

It is inter-engagement for which you are biologically predisposed-that allows the understanding of the subjective nature.

Hobson's conception about the development of mind and intersubjective engagement capabilities (1993) and Trevarthen (1,979, 1,998) on primary and secondary intersubjectivity, its symbolic role in the development and the organization of the self are many ways complementary.

On the one hand because ponder the role of social relations in the constitution of the subject (which is compatible with a conception of psychological development vigotskyana), and secondly, because such relationships involve a process of emotional and affective experiences between the baby early and care-giver.

Emotional experiences that shape shared meanings progressively scenarios that unfold mode formats (Bruner, 1983).

Our first paragraphs related to our ability to "read" other minds and reveal the nature of the skills that come into play in relationships and in everyday communicative practice, but would investigate what role these skills when understand the metaphors that make a poet or share a personal and indescribable emotion in front of the uniqueness of the episteme poetic.

Clearly, not all subjects have the same ability to understand or produce poetic texts.

Such capability is a suspension system (Rivière, 1997) whose explanation can not be reduced to folk psychology even if it is closely linked to it.

The human world seems to inhabit not only those more or less accurate geographies of what Bruner (1986) called the paradigmatic mode of thought, but also scenarios that violate the rules of logic and Gricean maxims and follow the vicissitudes of human intentions, weaving a narrative hardly reducible to axiomatic artificial systems.

Rivière (1991) presents and develops the challenges facing cognitive psychology if it is to be an objective discipline about the mental.

They (we) questions the possibility of maintaining the scientific status and also a mentalist approach in psychology.

Analyzes the characteristics of the phenomenal mind-he calls "a mind" - the computational mind-'mind two "- and the complex relationship between" two minds ".

Mentalistic skills are not mere human reasoning activities can not be reduced to the level of an axiomatic logic, capable of being formalized.

That is, we do not study only the "two minds" when we try to account for the operation of the mentalist.

A system colonized by emotional experiences and emotional, of meaning and sense, by a divergent mode of operation, is hardly catchable by the syntax of computing mechanisms.

Theory of Mind and autism spectrum

Paradigmatic modality and narrative mode of thought are irreducible and complementary.

The development of the narrative organization of human experience (Guidano, 1,987) is not only the possibility of construction of fictional worlds, which also belongs to the man but the real world building, shared contexts, woven into everyday interpersonal experiences of real lives of the subjects.

How does the social and communicative deficits of mental reading in the context of this real life?

Baron Cohen (1,999, adapted from pp. 9-12) responds:

- Lack of sensitivity to the feelings of others;

- Failure to take into account what the other person knows;

- Inability to make friends "reading" and responding to intentions;

- Inability to "read" the listener's interest level in our conversation;

- Inability to detect the figurative sense of the words of a speaker;

- Inability to anticipate what another person might think of one's actions;

- Inability to understand misunderstandings;

- Inability to deceive or understand deception;

- Inability to understand the reasons behind the actions of individuals;

- Inability to understand unwritten rules or conventions.

Here are some examples of children and youth with Asperger syndrome.

Let's clear that talk of "lack of sensitivity to the feelings of others" does not mean that, in its way, can not be affectionate with people they want.

But his way of showing it is different from other kids.

J. is a boy of 10 years with Asperger Syndrome.

At first sight of his teacher tells his mother, aloud, "What a (bad) that has painted it."

His mother worries and makes me a comment about how being the child and says that sometimes gets in trouble for his uninhibited form of expression.

He has no intention of attacking the teacher but can not consider that such comments may offend the sensibilities of people.

Nor has the ability to disguise what he is thinking or comment quietly. After talking to his teacher as if nothing had happened and invited him to one day go to play with his "play station.'' J.

It is extremely candid and spontaneous.

But that spontaneity can lead to disregard social conventions.

M. is a 16 year old with Asperger syndrome.

Knows by heart several talks movies, especially cartoons and comedies.

When we meet asks me if I liked the movie in which "the child says ..." and begins to recite a dialogue with the intonations and voices of different characters, regardless I do not know what movie you're talking about, or what scene or what characters.

Not able to give me, in that context communicative, relevant information.

And that information would be relevant to consider both what I know as I do not know.

Give information needed to contextualize your conversation and inhibit what is supposed to be a shared mental context.

S. is unable to "read" the level of interest of the listener from their conversation.

Shows no concern for me may not interest me what I own. She loves the brands of cars.

I said that Japanese brand cars were manufactured X and characterizes the different models, then continues with American and European cars.

Furthermore, as attempts to establish a link and have a desire to talk, ask me, every so often, what car I have, what brands I like, if I prefer the five-door or three, what are the factory colors of certain brands.

On the other hand, to approach others and start a conversation is to be able to read certain contextual cues (eg, if the other person is busy or talking with others).

Often M. feel rejected because they may be able to understand these codes and create strategies to reach out to their peers.

Additionally, if ever that comes close is to tell only what interests him, others tend to walk away.

As has a high level of "intelligence impersonal" is aware that he is left alone and states that do not get friends.

This is very sad. Need help to build "bridges" to others.

Can not find the necessary keys in each interpersonal situation to be successful in building links.

And this is an important point in the problem of the syndrome.

Not that M. people are not interested.

But people and human relationships in general are a "mystery" to him. As for the other can be a "mystery" how to be M.

Imagine for a moment that we were not competent to understand the fraud or deception, to understand the lie or lie.

Regardless of the moral evaluation of such behavior, one of the problems we would face in relationships with others would be impossible to interpret, understand and anticipate the behavior of others.

If we were "literal" when decoding behaviors and linguistic expressions of others, we feel frustrated and baffled in our naivete.

The distinction between behavior and intention and the distinction between reality and fiction are human characteristics that involve the development of interpersonal skills essential for normal development.

As noted Sotillo and Rivière (in press) lying behavior is closely related to that of deception: it appears in social interaction situations, intentionally, using skills related to making inferences mentalists (theory of mind), involves differentiating representation and world representation also involves differentiating itself from the others.

Behavior is given in recital, in predicative statements and conduct is expressed symbolically by a linguistic code.

In light of research on theory of mind (attribution of mental states to others and self: emotional mental states, epistemic and desire), you can consider the adaptive function fulfilled by the comprehension and production of tactical deception and lies in social relations between ordinary people and the deficit displayed by people with autism in that jurisdiction, which damages their lives radically relationship.

Also, there are serious anomalies in communication and language early in autism.

For Bailey, Phillips and Rutter (1996) the level of language is a good predictor of outcome is associated with psychoeducational and behavioral disorders, cognitive performance and social relatedness.

Regardless of the intellectual level-remember that about 75% of subjects with autism show some level of mental retardation, people with autism have pragmatic deficits (Bishop, 1989, Tager-Flusberg, 1993, Monfort, 1,997; Sotillo and Rivière, 1997 a, 1.997b).

Failures are recorded in the adaptation of the talks to the communicative contexts, starting or maintaining conversations, understanding figurative language, metaphors, double entenders, irony and jokes (Flores and Belinchón, 1,995; Belinchón, 1,997; Belinchón, in press ; Rivière, 1,996; Riviere and Sotillo, 1,995; Baron Cohen, 1997, Jolliffe and Baron Cohen, 1999).

The wide range of disorders that run along the autistic spectrum, opens a field of problems that exceed the deficit in theory of mind.

However, we want to note that such alterations have been and are studied under the subject's own symbolic development, highlighting topics related to theory of mind (Baron Cohen, Leslie and Frith, 1.985; Riviere, 991; Baron Cohen, 1.995), executive function (Pennington and Ozonoff, 1.996; Russell, 1,997) and the hypothesis of the system of central coherence (Frith, 1.989; Joliffe and Baron Cohen, 1999).

Although we did not extend on them here, it should be noted that can not be omitted when studying the development of narrative skills and mentalists in subjects with autism spectrum disorders.

It is also highly debatable bluntly separated from some other aspects.

Many investigations are concerned with studying the relationships between theory of mind and executive function (0zonoff, Pennington and Rogers, 1.991; Perner and Lang, 2,000), theory of mind and language (Tager-Flusberg, 1.993; Sparrevohn and Howie, 1995 , de Villiers, 2.000, Tager-Flusberg, 2,000), language skills and system of central coherence (Jolliffe and Baron Cohen, 1.999), theory of mind and system of central coherence (Happe, 2,000).

In any case, we speak of a cluster of skills, closely related, which must be taken into account when investigating mentalistic skills development and alterations in the autistic continuum. (Wing and Gould, 1.979; Wing, 1,988)

Phenotypic indicators of mental inference in populations with mild autism spectrum.

As noted, numerous investigations account for mentalistic skills deficits in people with autism.