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Apr2
A Critique of the Theory of Mind (ToM) Test
14 CommentsThe basic Theory of Mind (ToM) test was first developed by Wimmer and Perner in 1983, and then modified by Leslie and Frith in 1988. Wimmer and Perner used dolls, while Leslie and Frith used human actors. Regardless of the version, researchers have always come to the same conclusion regarding the results of the test.
I’ve always had my doubts about this conclusion.
The most common form of the ToM test is called the Sally-Anne Test. The ostensible purpose of the test is to measure a person’s ability to attribute false beliefs to other people. In the original version, the clinician uses two dolls, Sally and Anne. Sally has a basket, and Anne has a box. Sally puts a marble in her basket and leaves the scene of the action. Anne takes the marble out of Sally’s basket and puts it in her box. When Sally returns, the clinician asks the child where Sally will look for the marble.
To pass the test, a child must say that Sally will mistakenly look in her own basket first, evincing the belief that Sally is unaware that the marble has been moved. A child who fails the test will say that Sally will look in Anne’s box, where the marble is actually located. In Simon Baron-Cohen’s 1985 study of ToM in autism, 80% of the autistic children failed this test. The conclusion drawn is that the autistic children have an impaired (or non-existent) ToM and cannot understand that other people have information and beliefs different from their own.
I am very bothered by this conclusion. Very, very bothered.
I know that most neuro-typical researchers believe they have a “normal” ToM and can understand autistic people rather well. Needless to say, I’m quite skeptical. It’s not rocket science to know that you can read people who are like you, but have a harder time reading people who are unlike you. I would much rather hear an autistic person describe his or her own experience than hear a neuro-typical researcher making statements about how autistic people view the world.
Moreover, I am very suspicious about someone drawing a single conclusion from a psychological test. People are so complex that one child’s answer may be due to a large variety of factors, some of which may not ever have entered the mind of the researcher.
I had an insight into alternative reasons for a “failed” Sally-Anne test when I was at my OT visit this week. During one of the exercises, the OT and I were talking about why I always move my head when I move my eyes, and why I always have to turn my whole body to look at something. Until I started seeing my OT, it had never crossed my mind that I might look at something without moving my head, or that I might turn my head without turning my whole body. It occurred to me that a certain kind of hypervigilance is at work here, and that this hypervigilance is a feature of Asperger’s Syndrome.
For me, the visual and auditory world is a chaotic, ever-changing place. My eyes are always darting around, trying to make sure that the world is still in order. My sensory processing makes the world seem vast and overwhelming. To me, change is a given. I never expect anything to stay in one place. I’m so attuned to small details that I’m keenly aware when something has been moved, when a pattern has been interrupted, or when symmetry turns into asymmetry. It happens constantly. I like to organize things because it gives me a sense of control over a world that feels like it’s changing in strange and unexpected ways.
So when an autistic child is asked “Where will Sally look for the marble?” perhaps that child is so used to the world being chaotic and overwhelming that he or she automatically assumes that Sally would never look in the place she last saw it. To the contrary: she’d automatically look somewhere else. Being given only two choices—a basket and a box—the child picks the box. Given how the child perceives the world, this conclusion is perfectly rational. It doesn’t indicate a poor ToM at all. It simply indicates that the child believes that Sally processes sensory input like he or she does. Just because the odds are against Sally being autistic doesn’t mean that the child’s conclusion is wrong. The child is simply drawing a conclusion based on his or her own experience.
In this, the child who thinks that Sally will look in the box is no different from the researcher who assumes that that Sally will look in the basket. The “correct” answer is based on the researcher’s own sensory experience. To someone without sensory processing difficulties, the world appears a more orderly and manageable place. A neuro-typical person would figure that the marble would be where he or she had left it. It’s not surprising then, that neuro-typical children “pass” this test 100% of the time.
A better test might be to have Anne move the marble to an unknown place and ask the child whether Sally will think the marble has been moved. If the answer is yes, the reasearcher might then ask, “Where would she look?” If asked that question, the child might just say, “She’ll look everywhere she can.” That’s the answer I would have given as a child, because my experience was that nothing stayed the same for very long. If I had taken the test, I would have gotten dizzy and disoriented just thinking of all the possibilities for where the marble might end up. I’d probably have ended up crying in frustration.
If a researcher were to give such a test, the result would not imply an impaired ToM, but a different way of processing sensory information. It might imply that autism is a sensory processing condition, and that many of its features derive from sensory sensitivity and overload.
At least, that’s how it seems to me.
© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
14 Responses to “A Critique of the Theory of Mind (ToM) Test”
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Catana April 2nd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Your suggestion about sensory confusion sounds legitimate, though I don’t think it would account for 80% of the autistic children getting it wrong. What I would assume is that there is a whole assortment or reasons at work in any population being tested. Another reason might be that Sally Anned has had the experience of people fooling around with her stuff when she’s out of the room and might assume that it happened this time. All that would take is a sibling who takes pleasure in creating distress and confusion. I’m sure other people could come up with more ideas.
One mental limitation of people who create tests is that they assume there’s only one right answer, and if the answer given is wrong, then the reason for choosing it must also be wrong.
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I have always found these kind of measures to be simplistic. And annoying. By the way plenty of NT’s lack ToM.
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John Dale Lyons April 2nd, 2009 at 10:23 pm
The idea that Aspies think that NT’s and others don’t have a mind, that they’re black boxes, is sheer bullshit, and very insulting. I was subjected to a battery of tests when I was a child and Aspergers was all but unknown. I found the testing situation itself so overwhelming and confusing that of course I gave the “wrong” answers. I also tend to overthink things. So my reaction to those tests was “What the heck is this? Why is it relevent?” and “I am uncomfortable and can’t wait till this is over.”
This reminds me of culturally biased IQ tests of the 1950′s which assumed a white, middle class, Northern European cultural background.
Somewhere in hell, a god-like, giant white rat is running a wicked psychologist through a maze, in the afterlife…
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I tried to post a comment here, but it might’ve gotten spamtrapped or something due to containing a link to another blog…
Anyway, it was to point out yet another reason the Sally-Anne test is made of fail: the question asks “where will Sally look,” not “where is the *first* place that Sally will look.” Of course Sally will look in the box at some point! And even that is completely ignoring the fact that “look” has several meanings, one meaning to search for something, the other meaning to visually scan toward something…
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i tend to agree with John on this one: i think some of us may be trying to give the correct location of the item rather than actually answering the question. i have found most of my younger years spent second-guessing other people, which might be what’s happening. i haven’t yet come up with my own theory on the ToM dilemma, but have found the information i find on it a little distressing. most of what i discovered about AS has been a comfort, sooner or later, but not the ToM.
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also, the test says that 80% of autistic children ‘fail’ the test. is this one sort of test that people toward the AS end of the spectrum would ‘pass’ ? Tony Atwood was quoted somewhere as saying that the main difference between AS and high functioning autism is the spelling.
i can’t imagine not passing this test now, but not sure how i would do when i was six years old…. -
Apparently, children who “fail” the test can learn enough to “pass” it later. In her book, “Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports from My Life with Autism,” Temple Grandin writes:
“If I were two years old today, I would be diagnosed with classic Kanner’s syndrome, because I had delayed abnormal speech development. However, as an adult, I would probably be diagnosed as having Asperger’s syndrome, because I can pass a simple theory-of-mind test and I have greater cognitive flexibility than a classic Kanner autistic.”
Nothing about Dr. Grandin’s neurology changed between childhood and adulthood. She just learned more about the world of other people as she got older.
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John Dale Lyons April 3rd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Nothing about Dr. Grandin’s neurology changed between childhood and adulthood. She just learned more about the world of other people as she got older.
Same for me, and all of us. Maybe Asperger’s should be called: Late Bloomer’s Syndrome. Even NT’s, strange as they are, tend to learn more about other people as they gain life experience. There’s hope they may even understand us normal Aspies.
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You know, I’m thinking that I probably wouldn’t have passed the ToM test as a kid. In my early years of grammar school, whenever the teacher asked a simple question, I’d assume it had to be a trick question, because the answer was so obvious to me. It took me forever to realize that the questions really were as simple as they appeared.
So if someone had said to me, “Where will Sally look for the marble?” I’d assume that the answer couldn’t be the simplest one. I’d say “the box,” just to show how clever I was. I guess that would have shown a pretty poor ToM concerning the clinician’s motives, but somehow, I don’t think he’d have had the requisite ToM to pick up on it….
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I think that ToM exercise fails to demonstrate what clinicians are hoping for. Like you mentioned about being clever, sometimes my reasons for choosing any given option doesn’t necessarily have a thing to do with theory of mind!
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“Nothing about Dr. Grandin’s neurology changed between childhood and adulthood” That’s not true. Neurological development goes on until adolescence and even later. In addition, new research is showing that the brain is always in a process of being rewired by experience and the environment.
People tend to forget that the core of autism and Asperger’s is *developmental delays.* Children (and adults) develop at different rates, so tests like the Sally Ann test only show the current developmental stage. They say nothing about the future.
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Catana, you make an excellent point. I overstated. What I should have said was that Temple Grandin was autistic as a child and is autistic as an adult. Nothing can change that. However, she moved along the spectrum because she learned as she grew, as most of us do.
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We are studying this in my AICE psychology class, i think that the study done by Simon Baron-Cohen is definitely flawed in the respect that it does not go as far as to attempt to understand that ToM can differ fundamentally in Autistic children contrary to them not having one at all. Why is it that just because the children got the question wrong make it as though they don’t assume other people think? You sir raise a good point, as children we grow up noticing, or at least seeming to think that everyone thinks the same and has similar ideas. If most Autistic children see the world as chaotic and constantly changing then it is fair to say that they probably think everyone sees the world like that the same way a color blind child assumes that everyone sees the same as they do.
Because we can’t actually pry into other people heads who is to say that we as scientist studying perception and cognition are ever truly right or wrong? Autistic children definitely lack social ability next to a “normal” child, but it is not fair to say it is do to a complete absence of ToM, just presence of a different one perhaps. -
I also am studying this in AICE psychology, and happen to be in Daniel’s class. I myself have Asperger’s syndrome, and I too disagree with the Sally-Anne Test. As many people have pointed out, mainly the author, one test doesn’t indicate the presence or absence of a ToM. Many different reason could factor in to the answers given by the children, and to generalize that all autistic children must be lacking a ToM is a foolish mistake. I know that as a child i would have failed this test as well. I have an exceptionally high IQ, however i do not understand matters in the same manner that a non-Aspie would, namely, emotions. I cannot read emotions like most people, as is a common trait for Aspies, and therefore i would have been totaly confused on Anne’s reasons for moving the marble in the first place. I would have seen it that Anne must have been a spiteful person, and therfore Sally would expect that Anne would have moved her marble. I think my main point is one that Danny made, and it is simply that to say that the autistic lack a ToM is unfair, i think that they simply have a different and unique ToM.
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