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(continued)
Certain biological factors lead to BRAIN DAMAGE
a 'final common pathway'
cognitive deficit
1. "mind-blindness"
mindreading
:
Our everyday ability to attribute mental states (beliefs,
desires, emotions, intentions) to one another.
In other words, it is to be able to predict or infer what someone is thinking
or feeling. |
In "MindBlindness - An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind", Dr Simon Baron-Cohen
writes about 'mindreading'.
For example, suppose we see John walking into his bedroom, walking around and
then walking back out. A mindreader might guess: "Mabye John was looking
for something he wanted to find, and he thought it was in his
bedroom." Or the mindreader might think: "Mabye John forgot where he
was going: mabye he really intended to go downstairs."
You and I are mindreaders, simply because we are able to imagine or represent
states of mind that we or others might hold.
Each of the above examples start with a "mabye" because we are never 100% sure
what we or others are thinking, but nevertheless we find it easy to imagine
what others may be thinking.
theory
of the mind :
To have a theory of the mind is the ability to "attribute
independent mental states to self and others in order to explain and predict
behaviour." (Happe, 1994)
It is being able to mind-read (predict or infer) what someone is thinking
or feeling. |
However, for a person with mindblindness, s/he cannot make sense of John's
actions. Here is an attempt: "Mabye John just does this every day, at this time:
he walks into the bedroom, walks around and walks out again." Notice that someone
who is mindblind cannot come up with any causal motive or reason. S/he apparently
has not concept of 'mental states' and thus makes no reference to John's possible
mental state, i.e. s/he does not have a theory of
the mind.
Since the early 1990s, imminent researchers, such as Uta
Frith, Alan Leslie and Simon Baron-Cohen, have suggested that the
triad of impairments in autism result from an impairment of the fundamental
human ability to 'mindread'. From around the age of four years old, 'normal'
individuals understand (however intuitively) that people have beliefs and desires
about their environment, and that these mental states, rather than the physical
state of the world, determines the person's behaviour.
The "theory of mind" explanation of autism suggests that autistic people do
not have the ability to think about thoughts. This inability could be the cause
of their impairments in social, communication and imagination.
core problems of autism
1. socialisation
2. communication
3. imagination
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References:
Baron-Cohen, Simon (1995). "Mindblindness - an Essay on Autism and Theory
of Mind". Massachusetts, USA: Massachusetts Institue of Technology Press.
Baron-Cohen, Simon, Bolton, Patrick (1993). "Autism - The Facts". New
York: Oxford University Press.
Happe, Francesca (1994). "Autism - an introduction to psychological theory".
London: University College London Press.
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