Phenomenological perspective on ToM in ASD and schizophrenia

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05 Mar 2014, 5:36 pm

It's interesting, and looks at ToM has hypothesized in both autism and schizophrenia, and seems to be highly critical of the subject. Its abstract is here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23474990

The full text is here (you will need to sign up to have access, but it is free):

http://tinyurl.com/n63dmur

I don't pretend to even begin to understand it, but I'd love to see what others here have to say about it

EDIT: Changed to TinyURL.

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Last edited by beneficii on 05 Mar 2014, 6:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Verdandi
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05 Mar 2014, 5:54 pm

Very interesting.

beneficii
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05 Mar 2014, 6:07 pm

Looking at it more, it appears they are arguing that neurotypical people are generally "attuned" to social situations such that they may not need to engage in "mindreading." They also argue that "mindreading" in ASD and schizophrenia, which is used to compensate for said lack of "attunement," is an inherently pathological process that cannot completely compensate for the lack of "attunement." Given the pathological effects of "mindreading," the authors argue that the ToM proponents need to show how unconscious "mindreading" does not have the same pathological effects.

I think that summarizes it OK. :oops:

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05 Mar 2014, 6:12 pm

It is very interesting.

I think Simon Baron-Cohen's theories are going to do very poorly in an increasingly evidence-based field of study.

ToM deficits looking very shaky.
Empathy deficits looking very shaky.

He is going to need to re-evaluate many things and rethink some recent books.

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05 Mar 2014, 6:17 pm

As far as I could tell from a cursory glance, the thrust of it was that everyone has terrible ToM, but schizophrenic and autistic people (it mostly focuses on schizophrenia) actively try to use ToM to work out what is going on.

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05 Mar 2014, 6:22 pm

beneficii wrote:

I think they are arguing that ToM mindreading is not used by NTs because they have "embodied understanding" -- what has been proposed as a ToM mind reading based mechanism for Neurotypical perception of the mental states of others is a good description of what happens in mental illness/disability and not descriptive of neurotypical processes at all.

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05 Mar 2014, 6:37 pm

Adamantium wrote:

Simon Baron-Cohen hasn't based his research on empirical data in the past, no reason to expect him to do so in the future. Empirical data tends to contradict his assertions (Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, claims in Science of Evil, extreme male brain theory, etc). The sooner he is exposed as a subpar researcher with terrible ideas the better off we'll all be.

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05 Mar 2014, 6:42 pm

Interesting. So what I'm missing is an inborn intuition about other human beings so I try too hard to consciously work out what they're thinking and feeling but am doomed to fail over and over again? That sounds about right. :lol:

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05 Mar 2014, 6:43 pm

What they're thinking wasn't very interesting anyway.

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05 Mar 2014, 6:46 pm

^
........but how would we know? :lol:

rill
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05 Mar 2014, 7:17 pm

daydreamer84 wrote:

^
........but how would we know? :lol:

I don't want to know. Knowledge of one mind ought to be more than enough for anybody... :wink:

Also, I know it probably wasn't the point of the article, but I think I do have "embodied understanding" - it's just a different embodiment to the norm.

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07 Mar 2014, 7:10 pm

daydreamer84 wrote:

^
........but how would we know? :lol:

Because they often choose to tell us, no matter how badly we want or need to escape.

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