During Le Couteur et al.’s (1989) ‘strange situation’ study, on separation from a caregiver, the child is introduced to a stranger to play with. In ‘normally’ developing children show attachment to their caregiver from three months old by showing enjoyment at the attention and interaction of their caregiver. Yet the autistic child rejects attention from the caregiver and is ‘cold’ when reunited with the caregiver. It is therefore no wonder then that early observations into autism, researchers blamed the quality of the mother’s relationship with the child (Kanner, 1943). More recent research has investigated the causes of autism and suggests it is due perhaps to genetics, immunisation, prenatal complication or cerebral dysfunction but not enough is yet known about the disorder to determine the precise cause.
The relationship between mental and real states plays an important role in everyday perceptual, conceptual, emotional and social activities (Flavell, 1986). Piaget suggests there are different stages of development and found that during the preoperational stage (2 -7 years) the child becomes a ‘realist’ by believing everything has a physical basis, but cannot distinguish between the physical and the mental until later. Yet, Watson, Gelman and Wellman (1998) used a test on three to five year olds to determine whether they could distinguish the physical state from mental state. They used a method showing two pictures i) John is thinking about a marble, ii) John has swallowed a marble. For each picture the children were asked where the marble was; in John’s head or stomach. The results showed that children as young as three years could distinguish between swallowing and thinking and showed they knew that thinking objects could not be seen. When autistic children were tested, they were unable to distinguish between the mental and physical entities. Autistic children also found it hard to understand that physical functioning of the brain is for movement whilst mental functioning is for thinking.
In contrast with Piaget, Harris (1989) suggested that children are aware of their own mental states and can project them through imagination. Imagination can be of a pretend situation or one that has already happened and the child is imitating it. Imitation is the prerequisite for the acquisition of subsequent symbolic activities. Pretend play forms develop at around 12 – 24 months usually. It involves the cognitive ability to identify reality from metarepresentations. Le Couteur et al. (1989) found that 94% of autistic children have little imagination compared with 9% of IQ matched mentally impaired children. However these figures were based on parental reports and so are not completely reliable from a psychological perspective. When Baron-Cohen (1996) asked children to draw impossible objects, autistic children were reluctant to cooperate. In everyday play ‘normal’ children use objects by manipulation to be symbolic in their imaginative activity. However with autistic children, they prefer to play alone and display repetitive play with the object with a low frequency of pretend play (Baron-Cohen, 1987). This difference in play experience has implications for the development for a theory of mind.
Through the imaginative play of children, it has been found that they express emotion which is linked to the theory of mind. Emotions are intertwined into social relations (Woodhead, Barnes, Miell & Oates, 1995) yet before the development of emotional understanding; the child must be able to empathise (Reber, 1995). ‘Normal’ infants are able to recognise facial expression of others by three months old and by two years they use emotional terms in their language. By five years old they are able to understand that there may be individual differences in responses to a single situation (Gnepp et al., 1987). The older the child gets, the more aware the child becomes of certain expected cultural behaviours e.g. laughing at jokes, not laughing at someone hurting themselves. Autistic children in general have been found to have problems identifying and expressing emotions. Weeks and Hobson (1987) showed both autistic and non autistic children pictures of faces and were asked to sort the pictures into groups. The non autistic children sorted the pictures by the face’s emotion whilst the autistic child sorted by types e.g. hats. However emotion is very difficult to measure so these results are not conclusive but in general autistic children have been found to not smile or laugh appropriately to a given situation.
Although studies of autistic individuals do give evidence for assumptions about the theory of mind, these may not be plausible. It has been suggested that mental reasoning may comprise of many components and autism may only mean a delay in one of these components. Alternatively, autistic individual’s social understanding and interactions may be delayed or impaired. Also, it cannot be ruled out that impairment of linguistic knowledge may be the key to autism, and not theory of mind.
After researching into human theory of mind, psychologists then began to ask the question: ‘can animals possess a theory of mind?’ That is to say can animals like humans, identify whether another individual possesses some piece of knowledge and can they employ deception to change the beliefs of another individual to their advantage. These capabilities are seem as aspects of theory of mind. The main aspect which was studied was if chimpanzees have an understanding of false beliefs. In humans, Dennett (1978) suggested that an individual needs to establish an understanding of false beliefs before they can acquire a theory of mind. Wimmer & Perner (1983) believed that a theory of mind was well in the capacity of a typically developing four year old. They used an example with children being shown two dolls. Sally-doll places a marble in a basket then leaves the room. Anne-doll moves the marble from the basket into a box. The main question asked to the children is where will Sally-doll look for the marble? The idea is to see whether the child understands that Sally-doll has a false belief that the marble is still in the basket. The majority of four year olds tested had an understanding of false beliefs. Even 80% of the autistic children had an understanding of false belief. Since theory of mind is necessary for social understanding and communication, a deficit in a theory of mind may account for some of the core symptoms of autism. Autistic children may lack one or many aspects needed to develop a theory of mind, for example the 20% in Wimmer & Perner (1983) study who failed to understanding the principle of false beliefs.
Povinelli (1990) studied chimpanzees to see if they could make correct judgements about the knowledge possessed by humans. He presented four upturned cups in front of the chimp; one had food under it. The only indication as to which cup contained the food was by two trainers pointing to the cups. There was a knowledgeable trainer who set up cups and would always point to the correct cup whilst the other trainer always pointed to the incorrect cup which did not contain the food. After some trials the chimp showed a preference for the cup which the knowledgeable trainer pointed at. This is some evidence that the chimps do have a theory of mind by showing understanding of each trainer’s knowledge. However, this response made by the chimps could be explained by operant conditioning in that choosing the same trainer reinforced the likelihood of getting food.
Woodruff and Premack (1979) wanted to investigate whether the chimps could transfer false information to deceive others and so discover whether chimps have understanding of false beliefs. The chimp had to observe a trainer placing food under one of two containers. Another trainer entered the situation. When the chimp pointed to which container the food was under in front of the first trainer, if the chimp got it right then it was allowed to keep the food and if the chimp got it wrong then it would not get the food. If the chimp pointed to the right container in front of the second trainer then he would not receive the food but would if the chimp got the wrong container. It was found that the chimp would deceive the second trainer by wrongly pointing to the incorrect container without the food. This shows how the chimps have the ability to deceive others. Yet again, this could be due to operant conditioning or to the chimps having some social learning ability, but there is not the evidence to say they have a theory of mind to the extent of humans.
In society there are certain unwritten rules which are expected from each individual; those aspects we are obtain by having a theory of mind. Those who do not fit in with these rules i.e. autistic people can be classed as abnormal and different. A theory of mind has been found in both humans and animals, but impaired in autistic children. Future work should help to spread awareness about autism and for others to accept autism into their society. More research into autism needs to be done which will help to find the underlying cause and to use this information to discover other social disorders which mean that the individual is unable to develop a ‘normal’ theory of mind.
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