Theory of mind?

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There used to be a theory that the autistic brain processed information more slowly because it had fewer connections. But now research has shown it's the opposite. The brain is more densely connected, or "hyperconnected," so we are prone to information overload, hence the need for a pause.



It's the opposite for me, I don't really register everything while it's happening, but later I remember an odd glance that the person gave me, and a gesture they made, or something about their tone of voice. But my memory of the actual words spoken is often foggy, unless it is something that stuck in my mind and looped repetitively (and those loops can stick with me for years).



I believe that is what the average NT is doing most of the time (the bolded part). They are not really parsing lots of information in real-time better than we do. They have fewer brain connections. They are taking in less information, prioritizing it faster and going ahead with the most likely interpretation. It just happens to work for them most of the time, with each other, because their processing is not as complex.

I think it is not being self centered or selfish or not making a bridge from self to others, though it may be an infantile condition.
It's more like not separating oneself from others.
I have often thought that my problem is not being able to separate myself from others or the rest of the world.
It's hard to explain, but it can be seen as being naïve or stupid.
As an example, I can't haggle properly at a flea market because I am just as concerned with the other person getting a fair price as myself and I don't consider that the other person may have different circumstances or different motives..

My point is that NTs tend to do this subconsciously - there is a whole subsection of the brain working on that kind of data on an instinctive level without conscious thought going into it. I suppose it is a bit like driving the car - when I'm driving the car without consciously thinking about what I do, I drive much better. When I consciously think about each action, I make much more of a mess of it and tend to grind gears. As an NT, I couldn't consciously say why I think someone will react a certain way to something - I have to rely on instinct and trust that my subconscious has a good reason for providing that conclusion, and I think I'm generally fairly accurate.

That does give rise to the interesting question as to how Aspies can attempt to simulate these NT abilities. I think from what I understand, Aspies are much better at focusing on 1 particular task at a time and utilising the capacity of the brain directly and in some ways more effectively, but that this comes at a cost of it being more difficult to parallel process things on a subconscious level, which is really important in a social situation when you have to track the obvious parts of the conversation at the same time as reading the body language, tone of voice, subtext etc to get the full social implications. Perhaps it is possible for Aspies to achieve some steps towards this with practice - some sort of CBT-like course to train in the ability through repetition. The problem is that there are so many different things that can happen that I'm not sure how much it would be possible to do that.

So, it's almost like having a dedicated processor just for for processing this type of information. Similar to the way that a computer can have a dedicated processor just for processing graphics.



An interesting question, indeed.

If I were me, I would think like I do. That is theory of my mind. AMAZING!! !

when you can think about someone, and they call you. Have someones answer to a question that had not been asked yet. Know what someone had for dinner. Remember what someone dreamt about, than I will believe someone is onto something. Only then will you actually know something about this theory of mind stuff.

I'm going to use the word mentalizing on people more often

I think it is fun when a sociopath believes he/she is one of the best mind readers in the universe. That is pritty much all of them. He/she is soo good at it he/she should have been a P.I. , a cop, or sherlock Holmes. Truth is, they just believe that because they are sociopathic. They are actually the worst at it because they are missing feelings. Emotions are sedated. They lack empathy all together, and just want to win. If you want to understand these things about others, you need to have all of those feelings, and emotions in tact. It would probably help to be an excellent dreamer, not be superficial, or superimportant. In fact it would also probably be prudent to take the idea of ToM, and throw it in the trash.

my teachers told me I do this.

Yeah, I forget what people do and don't know sometimes, when I get too involved. Like, I'll be explaining something really elementary to someone who knows more about the field than I do--like, I've literally lectured my psychiatrist on how the brain works (she had the grace not to say, "thanks, I learned that in first year medical school, can we skip to how this applies to you, please?"). Or I'll assume they know what I know, and forget that they don't have the background I do, and it'll go straight over their heads. The other day I realized I was trying to explain economics to my cat.... which was more like thinking aloud, granted, but I'd probably do the same thing if the audience were a five-year-old kid.

If I remember what people know, slow down and think about what I'm going to say, I'm pretty good with keeping things tailored to their audience. But if I forget, then silly situations like the above can happen.

From what I understand the difference between NT and Aspie brains isn't so dramatic that NTs have got extra hardware. I think Aspies probably have mostly the same set of hardware, but it is more wired towards all working together one 1 task rather than working on multiple things at a time. I think that's why NTs can't focus on a particular task in the same way as Aspies often can - we've got too many parallel things going on at once and that can be distracting.

There are really not many people who can actually multi task. People who think they can are usually wrong. I have seen what a multi tasker can do to a car when they text and drive. An actual multi tasker is actually very rare indeed. Left brain thinkers have the ability to discard alot of thoughts, when they do this, they can do more than one thing at a time, but they are very hap hazard about it. People in meditation who want to expel thoughts do the same thing, they think left.

It is fun when people think everyone has the same thoughts as them. It is what alot of animals do, especially insects. They are hard wired to have group thinking. It is no different. Colonies of most insects would not survive without it. Seems like young people have the idea exactly that way, however, human evolution threw a wrench at it a long time ago.

Turning this insight around-- the understanding of ones cat from the cat's angle, the complete and simple understanding of the cat can be world changing, not just for the cat and oneself, but of the entire world, as it is conscious direct perception. The biggest understanding of my life, which insight occurred when I was riding the bus one afternoon, is that each person cherishes himself, that this is directly connected to perception, and we are all interconnected in the present moment by perception because we have this one pure thing in common....we each cherish ourselves:-) Therefore, to start from the end of completely cherishing the other person is to connect 'two' perceptions to one. Past this point intellectual analysis is specifically not required because 'this' perception is in itself connected to all understanding, everywhere, from every possible angle, so instantaneously world changing. Joy!

Last edited by littlebee on 09 Mar 2014, 12:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Agreed. I wasn't suggesting an extra processor. Simply one better focused on processing that type of information.

I think there is a difference between conscious multi-tasking which practically no one can do properly (although perhaps some people can time-slice to some degree if they've had enough sleep), and having subconscious thoughts going on in parallel with the conscious, which I think everyone does to some degree, but NTs probably do more.



I'm not even sure that is true - I think that it is pretty much the same set of components, but the wiring between them is different, which affects what they get used for. If that's correct then perhaps there is a way to make use of CBT or similar techniques to train an Aspie brain to be able to temporarily switch into NT mode and vice versa (as an NT, I do think it would be useful to be able to switch on some Aspie abilities - the ability to focus so much on a particular task would be very useful for me with my work at times).

For me, I often find that if I don't go through the entire explanation I get lost. I find it hard to jump in at the 'correct' place without taking whoever I'm talking to there first.

Marybird, thanks. This is a very interesting message, very astute. I will respond below:


I did a lot of pondering about this comment which is why it took so long to respond. I think ultimately it might boil down to some kind of esoteric definition of what it means to be self-centered. I would like to go into this in more depth sometime, maybe here or on some other thread, but I still have to think more about it.


Definitely agreed and in my case as applied to ME, 100% completely understood.


This is where subjective dynamics play into the same general kind of syndrome. I can haggle very appropriately at flea markets or anyplace, as to me my entire being depends on getting enough food (love), probably in this instance because of very early experience and also later childhood experience reading love and feeding (which is too painful for me to go into just yet, though many times I have thought about writing about it here), but receiving a bargain or discount from someone equates not only with receiving love but even with survival. I do not think it is a very healthy dynamic, though recently have ciome to understand it a lot better and this has helped to to some degree to become freer. Re your personal dynamic, there are explanations for this, also, that could possibly relate back to early childhood experience and be explained by object relations theory. My bargaining thing, which I have already written about on a thread about autistic lying is that until somewhat recently I could only tell a customer my actual price. Most crafts people and people who sell at flea markets (which I have also done) deliberately start with a higher price as the customer expects them to do that. Then I would get frustrated and feel despair when people tried to bargain me down. Imo, a sick dynamic. I did finally solve that problem, which was for me a big breakthrough. I wrote about it on that other thread, but am too lazy now to find the message and post a link to it.

I think these two individual dynamics can possibly be explained by object relations theory and yet still come up with this same blanked-out, pure, naive state we have in common and so many of us have, which you so well described. I do think it has to do with brain function, of course, and how our brains are now, but I am not sure it is because we are born this way. I do not think it is, though the way genetic brain is (or I should say was, as the brain is very flexible can develop in many different ways) surely played and plays into it.

Nonono, theory of mind, is your own personal understanding of others' personality, of agency. It's not a theory. It's an individual's theory of how other people (minds) think.

What do you mean, people need to stop making sense? Don't you mean the opposite? Aspies are mostly in this conundrum because people don't make sense. To them, they don't assign individual agency or free will. You could say that to the typical autist, everyone else is just an NPC in a video-game.

Autism has been shown, through research, to be a result in which genetic and epigenetic factors cause differences in the brain which are present at birth.

Unless you want to go back to the refrigerator mother theory in which case you can apply object relations theory, which is psychological.

Reactive attachment disorder is an example of how environmental conditions can cause autistic symptoms in a brain that was genetically normal at birth. Perhaps may even change the brain.

I don't understand object relations theory, to me it sounds like psychobabble.
I don't understand why anyone would want to apply outdated psychological theories to a condition like autism in which modern research has made so much progress in understanding.

The brain is flexible and that is why early intervention works well.
The effect the environment has on how our brains develop psychologically is not something that can be applied to an entire group of autistic people, it is a very individual thing.

There is no autistic card to be played that is psychological. Autism is not a psychological condition. It is a physical difference.