Higher order Theory of Mind (test yourself)

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On the spelling test one on whether the teacher knew Kristy wanted to do well on the test I thought it was "no" because she only asked James, and thought that "yes" answers were used to indicate poor theory of mind since it would indicate you thought the teacher knew it just because Kristy did in fact want to do well. But then I looked back and noticed it says she told the teacher how hard she had been studying.

Does this indicate a failure of theory of mind or working memory? I can't imagine that the results would have been any different if you replaced the situation and the facts in the situation with non-social ones.

The questions are worded in a ridiculous manner.

Even the higher order ToM ones. They assume entirely too much information, pulling it strait out of the Æther.

If you break down any of these stories they are riddled with flaws. Bobby's mother cannot possibly know that chocolate is Bobby's favorite thing in the world, she can only be reasonably sure of anything regarding Bobby's subjective world view... And the whole presumption that chocolate is Bobby's "favorite thing in the whole world" is silly. Take away his chocolate bars, and his air supply... then offer him to pick which of the two he would like back. It probably won't be the chocolate.

Besides, who even cares about this chick? She doesn't want her own son to enjoy what she believes is his favorite thing in the whole world, so she secretly steals it from him? Screw her.

And the second question... whether Bobby thinks his chocolate is in his cupboard or in his mom's bag... how are we supposed to know? I mean, yeah, there is a really good chance he thinks it is still in his cupboard where he left it... but with a mom like he's got... he might know that B gets grabby with his snacks and expects her to snag his s**t. He might bee keen on her favorite hiding spots too. Don't know, story doesn't say what he thinks. s**t, he could have been at his friends house and saw on the five o clock news that his house got hit by a meteor, then he'd probably be thinking his chocolate is gone and lost forever! Story doesn't say, so we can only make base assumptions with moderate risk of being incorrect.

Sorry but you are unnecessarily trying to apply logic where it isn't needed to process things. Some things are just the way they are, they cannot be logically analysed because if you try, you'll end up being overly theoretical, too removed from reality without good reason. Who cares about such hypothetical scenarios as taking away chocolate bars and air supply? Really irrealistic thought experiment. And sure, Bobby could've lied to her mother about what his favourite thing is but why assume this unnecessarily now?

Some more flaws in your reasoning. Firstly, the concept of "favourite thing" doesn't have to include things that are in the category of basic human needs. We can easily define "favourite thing" as the most preferred thing among non-essential things the person has access to/is familiar with. You seemed to define "favourite thing" by the irrealistic arbitrary idea of it being something you need the most to survive. Nope, a "favourite thing" is something more irrational than that, it's just something a person likes, call it a special fixed kind of whim if you want. See dictionary definition: "a person or thing regarded with especial preference or liking". On another note, when air is taken away, the situation is substantially changed so even if we use your arbitrary subjective definition of "favourite", the analysis of the new situation doesn't apply to the old one. Again, just an irrealistic thought experiment. Why not just accept the dictionary definition and use that?




Pfft. She had good intentions, she wanted him to be able to eat dinner ("tea"). But yeah a mother can be annoying like that LOL.




Easy now, you simply do not assume anything that was not explicitly mentioned in the text. Why should you? Less risk of being incorrect that way in general anyway. The fewer assumptions one uses for a reasoning process, the more likely the result will be acceptable. You do not seem to have a grasp on realistic evaluation of probabilities either; praytell how likely it is that the house gets hit by a meteor? You do need to know though that the context is that these stories are rather basic templates based on real life stuff, do not expect anything crazy like that because that sort of stuff just doesn't happen.

Oh and more on the meteor, if the house does get hit by one, the friend's house (which is obviously close enough so the little boy can get back home for dinner) will also be affected and thus boy isn't going to watch the news on tv there.

So, to answer your question as to how we are supposed to know; Really very easy, you only have two choices to pick from in the test, so don't pick the one that's rather obviously unlikely based on what the story explicitly tells you.

I do agree though that the stories were written in a rather boring and basic way. It was meant for kids though, don't forget that.

I stumbled on story #4 because I forgot to distinguish between football players. I often get confused by multi-character stories. I didn't mind the wording at all.
I recently ran across some ToM stuff, and it explains a lot about my life. The Sally-Ann test is simple logic, so I had assumed that everyone did it consciously. My counsellor confirms that for her, it is subconscious and automatic, and that my way would be exhausting.
As a toddler, I was getting into a lot of unexpected trouble until I heard the Golden Rule. That gave me a way to avoid most conflict, and I assumed that other people were also navigating by it, with allowances for missing data and poor processing at times. That let me focus on technical problems for almost four decades until someone yelled at me for trying to help them. Every decade since, I've had a similar shock, which has left me spending almost all my time trying to guess at the millions of ways others might think outside of logical paths.

I didn't have any problems, they all seemed to be about equally obvious.

Yeah, its a humorous read. A "football manager"? WTF? That must be a "coach" (and its prolly "soccer", and not American "football" that theyre talking about). And "a tea" is called "dinner" in the USA. And I didn't even think about the fact that mum and spelt are both plants in the US. Lol! And the Brits do do that funny thing with grammar. They will say "the government ARE doing XYZ", or "he made the goal, and the crowd ARE going wild!". The government and the crowd are aggregates of large numbers of people. But they are still one entity. So you have to talk about them in the singular. The government IS doing such and such, and the crowd IS going wild.

But back to the main subject. The ToM stuffed seemed pretty easy to follow. I was expecting one of those modern online tests in which you click the answer, and it grades you. So maybe I didn't really pass, but it seemed like I was easily passing to me.

What I found when I did it was that I was going incredibly slowly just to comprehend the questions, and that I was working out the answers using logic as I figured out the questions.

I've got a feeling that, if one is using theory of mind properly, your mind is supposed to figure out the answer automatically without having to think it through, but given how much logic I had to use just to understand the questions, I never got the opportunity to determine whether I could determine the answer without resorting to logic.

I also have no idea whether I actually did arrive at the right answer because I couldn't find any answer key.

Yes. Its supposed to be automatic.

The most basic ToM test is: Mary and Jane are in a room. Mary puts her favorite toy into a box sitting on top of the desk and leaves the room momentarily. Then Jane takes the toy out of the box, and puts it into the drawer of the desk.

So when Mary returns where does Mary look to find the toy? The box? Or the drawer?

you're supposed to automatically say "the box" because Mary had no way of knowing that naughty Jane moved the toy while Mary was away. So Mary would look in the last place she knew the thing was last time she saw it, which was where she herself put it when she left.

So all ToM tests are basically variations of that.

I thought it was Sally and Anne, not Mary and Jane.


In any case, even after doing these tests, I have no idea whether I could do the higher order tests automatically because I worked out the answers using logic as I worked out what the questions even meant.

Yes. Couldn't think of the two girls' names off the top of my head.

Its even called "the Sally Anne Test".

They have even divised nonverbal versions of the Sally Anne test for monkeys and apes.

Glad I wasn't the only one. I get that they need to be short and to the point, but they are so boring! It makes it hard to focus on them!

I also missed a bit of info in The Test. I must have missed some words because I did not read the important piece of information DGuru posted on the top of this page, about what she said to her teacher. You have to read them very thoroughly to not miss out on info and it's hard when they are so uninteresting. They made me yawn, despite really wanting to do them and test how I did.

I also did badly on the memory tests, especially with minor unimportant details like the color of the bag and which day they had football practice.


As for how I did, they were doable, on second attempt!

Warning, there might be spoilers below for those who haven't taken the test yet.

I had no problems with Bobby's chocolate bars, The video dilemma, or The school football team.

I missed out on what Kirsty told her teacher before the test, so when it was asked:


I hadn't seen that she told her directly. I thought "how can I know? Teachers probably assume kids wanna do well, but it's not like they all care, so how can I know?
Then I read DGuru's post and went back and reread it, and realized the very text said it literally. (How is that theory of mind by the way?)

The other I was uncertain about is this:



If the text is taken at face value, then there is no indication that he heard her in his room, so he probably thought he fooled her. But we don't know if she looked guilty having almost been caught, or if she looked and sounded believable when she said: “Erm, nothing yet, Ben”
I particularly wondered if that erm was supposed to be a hint that she outed herself a bit, or at least gave her brother reason to suspect something.

Are YOU serious???????????????

Of course "have gotten" both sounds, and is, right.

If you're the mayor of San Juan Puerto Rico you would say "we still haven't gotten any help here".

You would NOT say "we still haven't got any help here". Yuck!