Mind Blindness

There are many possible sets of assumptions that could be made, and the small number of likely answers means that the test cannot adequately distinguish between many of the possible assumptions. Furthermore, the categorisation of responses into "passes" and "failures" throws away most of that information. There are several ways to pass, and vastly more ways to fail. These problems make the test of limited use as a diagnostic tool.

The standard interpretation of the test identifies a particular stage in the most common pattern of development of social understanding, but it is misleading when applied to subjects who are not following the standard pattern.

This is of particular concern with autistics, who are commonly diagnosed as lacking a theory of mind on the basis of "failing" the test. Much of the information is gathered by "reading" body language and so a person with pervasive developmental disorders such as autism or Asperger syndrome may be at least partially mind-blind due to their inability or difficulty in reading body language. It has been suggested that these can reduce the degree to which mind-blindness is present. Of course these instructional methods require a basic assumption that the physical expressions of individuals in the wild are reflective of the mental state of the individuals.

This however, is not always the case. In many instances among human interactions, we mask our mental states using body language that is intentionally incongruent. It is not always true that a smiling person is happy, nor is it always true that a sad person does not laugh. Some question the use of body language instruction as a means to understand the mind of humans when the world as it exists currently requires hidden agendas and even outright dishonesty. It may be that this focus on body language as a means to gaining insight into the minds of others leaves autistics at a disadvantage in a world populated by neurotypicals who understand how to manipulate others using body language.

By nature, autistics struggle with the topic of honesty and their mindblindness may be partly due to an understanding of the incongruence of body language and thought in humans.

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This is to assess if her brain is developing typically or not. Most people usually talk about the things they want, and openly say what they believe. Some people are so messed up that it is just not possible to figure them out.

Know when to give up. Women talk more than men and focus on feelings more. These are the more general tips. For more specific tips click on their article page here. Theory of mind is an important tool for us in order to deal with the world. It enables us to navigate the social world, assess and recongnize our own feelings as well as the feelings and thinking of other people, and most of all enable us to cooperate with people as if they are our own family.

However some people in neurodiversity lack ToM and therefore have mind blindness which can adversely affect their dealing with themselves as well as other people which could bring bad results such as social isolation and depression. It is therefore important that when a child shows lack of interest in the world to be assessed right away for mind blindness and help teach theory of mind through years of therapy and love and support. With enough support neurodiverse people can navigate the world more easily. He is not the best source for a lot of this.

Neurodiversity advocates human brain variety.

His own Theory of Mind has been lacking on several ocassions. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account.

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Body language & mind-blindness

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Paranoia in the Asperger's Mind

Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. The superior temporal sulcus is involved in the processing of behavioural information while the temporal poles are involved in the retrieval of personal experiences. These are considered important regions for the activation of the ToM regions and are associated with the mind-blindness.



The temporal poles provide personal experiences for mentalization such as facial recognition, emotional memory and familiar voices. In patients suffering from semantic dementia, the temporal regions of these patients undergo atrophy and lead to certain deficits which can cause mind-blindness.

The amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex also are a part of the ToM. It is in involved in the interpretation of behaviour which plays an important role in social cognition and therefore contributes to the theory of the mind. It is suspected that the damage to the orbitofrontal cortex brings upon subtle impairments, but not a total loss of the ToM that would to mind-blindness. However, a study by Stone and colleagues were able to show impaired ToM on mentalisation tasks.



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Since the frontal lobe is associated with executive function, researchers theorize that the frontal lobe plays an important role in ToM and its associated nature. It has also been suggested that the executive function and the theory of mind share the same regions. Lesion studies show that when lesions are imposed to the medial frontal lobe, performance on mentalization tasks is reduced, similar to typical mind-blindness cases.

However, it is still debated whether the inactivation of the medial frontal lobe is involved in mind-blindness. Frith and Frith proposed that a neural network that comprised the medial prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and the STS, is crucial for the normal functioning of ToM and self monitoring. This so formed dorsal system is crucial for social cognition.

Disruption of this neural network leads to mind-blindness in schizophrenic individuals. Another clue towards a possible explanation of mind-blindness in autistics was done by Castelli and colleagues. They were able to show that the connectivity between occipital and the temporo-parietal regions were weaker in the autistic group than the control group.

The under activation of this network may inhibit the interactive influences between regions that process higher and lower perceptual items. Mind-blindness is usually associated with autistic people. Lower performance on the mentalization tasks were the first screening task used to diagnose the autism, with a good prediction level. Cohen proposed the mind-blindness theory of autism as "deficits in the normal process of empathising".

He described empathising to include the ToM, mind reading and taking an intentional stance. According to this view empathising includes the ability to attribute mental states and to react in an appropriate emotional manner which is appropriate to another's mental state. More deficits tend to occur in reference to one's own mental states compared to the other's mental states. It has been proposed that autistic people undergo a specific developmental delay in the area of metarepresentational development.

The delay facilitates mind-blindness. There is some evidence that suggests that certain patients develop a rudimentary ToM and do not suffer from complete lack of ToM causing mind-blindness. It showed that a complete possession of ToM was not enough to protect from social impairments in autistic people.

Conversely the absence or impairment of the ToM that leads to mind-blindness does not lead to social impairments. The social and cognitive differences seen in autistic people are often attributed due to mind blindness. Abnormal behaviour of autistic children are perceived to include a lack of reciprocity.

Some cases in which mind-blindness manifests includes the child being totally withdrawn from social settings as well as not being able to make eye contact while in other cases the individual may attempt to interact with other people. However, global asocial behaviours is not the rule in autism. The triad consists of deficits in social, communication and imagination of others' minds. Ozonoff and colleagues were able to discriminate between autistic people diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and other autistic people by their ability to solve ToM tasks.

It is due to those diagnosed with AS seem more neurotypical in development early on in childhood. The siblings of individuals diagnosed with AS were shown to have a lesser variant of ToM deficits. This shows that the cognitive deficits that affect the ToM play central role in the phenotype expressed in AS diagnosed.