ToM

ToM

1. Understanding emotions: 3 Months

   • babies look away from depressed mothers and towards happy ones. Babies born from a depressed mother will look less at  a happy mother
   • Understanding emotions 6 months
     • Babies will get annoyed if mothers facial expression and voice tone is different. Possibly due to understanding the pairing of happy face and voice tone rather than an understanding of ToM.
     • at 6 months, babies will get annoyed if facial expressions and voice tone are different Possibly due to the understanding of pairing happy face and voice tone, rather than mental states

2. Early signs of ToM in children

   • Face paddle study
   • Newborns: find faces interesting
     • Will look longer at face paddle and look more when eyes are open. As babies get a lot of attention when they're born, they may associate eyes with attention and emotion. Infants have a preference for looking at faces. 
     • One year: Social references and emotional understanding.
       • Visual cliff experiement

3. ToM in children

   • Newborns:
     • find faces interesting. Look more at face paddle if eyes are open. Babies get lots of attention when they're born. Eyes express attention, emotions sometimes knowledge. Infants have a pereference at looking at faces
     • One year:
       • social references: emotional understanding: using emotional signals of others to guide their action.  
       • Visual cliff
         • Look at parent to see if they have fearful eyes or calm eyes.  If fearful, they won't cross, if calm, they will.
         • Interpreting info from face unlikely ToM understanding.
           • More that fear is bad and calm is good
       • Protoimperative
         • Pointing ti gget mother to pick something up. eg., I want food that I dropped 
       • Protodeclaritive
         • Pointing with no apparent reason or desire for an object e.g., That is interesting, look at it Sometimes done, just for the attention regarding looking at something. 
         • Child manipulating behaviour
           • Trying to get them to do something
       • 12-18 Months
         • Joint attention:
           • child will start to understand and engage with attention of others. Do they understand the mental state of attention or just that following a gaze yeilds interesting outcome e.g., pointing, adult looks, if the adult doesn't look they will point again
         • Around 18 months:
           • Self recognition: 16-24mns
             • Seperate being but not seperate mind (16-24 months). They understand "me" so can begin to understand difference between "me" and "others" and others own mental staes.
           • Empathy 18-24 mons
             • children begin to actively assist others who are upset  - true signs of empathy If you place a crying child in a room  with happy children, they will all start crying.
             • Crying contageion
               • when babies cry just because another baby is crying, not due to actually feeling sad.
             • Perner:
               • if a child  ONLY  felt sad, then could simply be emotional contageion. If a child ONLY tried to stop the child from crying, then it could be a learned response. If a child does BOTH then it could be a sign of understandingown experience of distress (empathy). i.e., not trying to stop them from crying, but trying to stop them from feeling sad.
             • Bischot-Kohler:empathetic toddlers
               • 36 toddlers Playing with a teddy and it's arms fall off Experiementer cries for 2.5 minutes  RESULTS: - 11 children helped (distressed + helped) - 7 children blocked (distressed + enlists mothers help or acts after crying had stopped. - 10 children confused (distressed but no help) - 8 children unconcerned (not distressed and offered no help.
             • Ruffman,et. al.,: empathetic toddlers?
               • 100 adults and  100 toddlers shown 4 videos: - infant crying - infant laughing - " babbling (talking babble) - neutral infant w/white noise (Noise varied in volume like crying and laughing does naturally) Asked to rate maximum facial happiness and sadness every 5 seconds during a 1min vid. Asked to create an overall happiness score. Results: - adults significantly happier than toddlers (2.5 years) when viewing laughing and babbling video - adults significantly less happy than toddlers when viewing crying - no difference when viewing white noise. - Toddlers look unhappy because of adverse stimulus, not because of empathy 
           • 2-3 years:
             • Begin to understand desires and a link between desires and happiness.
             • Wellman + Wooly: happiness and desire
               • person 1 wants a rabbit and gets one. how do they feel?   person 2 wants a rabbit and gets a dog. How do they feel? Results: 2y/o understand desire happiness link 
             • Desire-action link
               • Sam wants to take his rabbit to school. Rabbit could be under the porch or in garage. - looks for it and either finds it or doesn't. - look at how they respond to that by either stop searching and going to school, or KEEP searching. Results: 2 y/o's recognise how desire shapes actions
             • 4 years:milestone
               • children act according to their beliefs
               • False belief: Wimmer + Perner
                 • Shifts in understanding are shown by false belief tasks Story character puts chocolate in green cupboard and goes outside to play. While outside, mother moves the chocolate to the blue cupboard and also goes outside. Ask the child participant: What cupboard will the story character look in? If the child says green cupboard then they understand ToM 
                 • Why use false belief and not true belief tasks?
                   • Child knows chocolate is in the blue cupboard but has to say the character thinks green so thechild can't be: a. egocentric b. can't base response on objects true location. They must be able to reason where character thinks chocolate is rather than where it really is.
                   • Location or content studies: Smarties box test
                     • 90 months will pass, 60 months will pass, but 3 years will struggle.
                     • Doesn't matter how the question is asked
                       • doesn't matter if asked for themselves like the smarties box test or for others like the Wimemr and Perner.
                 • Control Q + deficits
                   • 1. where did Maxi put the chocolate in the beginning? 2. Where is the chocolate now? The children must pass these to ensure they understand the story. If they fail, it is due to a defecit in MENTAL STATE understanding not a language or memory deficit
               • Lying and the theory of mind.
                 • you need to understand that other people don't know what you know
               • 5 years
                 • False belief +culture: Avid and Harris
                   • Baka tribe given the unexpected test (contents test) Over 5 years they passed,under 5 years they failed.  Japanese children passed a little earlier
               • ToM + Real World Behaviour
                 • Typically developing children w/ ToM: -Rated as socially competent -more connected communication -more sophisticaled pretend play    - can encourage further ToM learning - more moral, empathetic, popular - better teachers w/peers DOWNSIDE: Children with higher ToM scores on False Belief Tasks were MORE sensitive to teacher criticism as they were more hurt.
                 • Autism and struggling to learn pretend play
               • Prior to 4 years: IMPLICIT INSIGHT
                 • Asking a child where they would look and seeing where the child looks. 2 years and 11 months, they will look at the correct answer, but say the incorrect answer 
                 • Implicit: unconscious knowledge
                   • Not aware you possess the knowledge, but it affects your behaviour (i.e., looking)  Develops before explicit
               • Explicit: Conscious knowledge
                 • can verbalise what they know, because they know what they know ● At four years old the children understand that they can trick another person. ● Whereas, at three years old the children think that because they know what hand they have put the button in so does the other person. ● Telling white lies that make other people feel better is a later step in development
                 • After 4 years: Eyes task
                   • Silent film:  Someone gets stuck in the back of a truck and driver appears unaware Child asked if the driver knows they're in there
             • children act according to desires

4. ToM continues to develop throughout life

   • Older children/adults: Still linked with social competence in pre-adolescence 
   • ToM in adulthood
     • Baron-Cohen's eye task
       • Shown only the eyes of a person and asked them to explain whether they were disgusted or sad, happy or surprised, etc
   • Different issues can distrupt it
     • Autism and ToM
       • Leo Kannerand Hans Asperger
         • Believed autism is a basic disturbance in schiziophrenia: Narrowing of relationships and social life.
         • AUTISM SYMPTOMS
           • 75% below normal IQ 50% no language 2-6% per 1000 No economic or socieoeconomic differences Typically diagnosed between 2-5 years, although some are diagnosed when older due to language delay or a lack of appropriate social development
           • Period of normal development before Autism
             • Some children have this, before the onset of symptoms and may even lose some earlier aquired skills, such as early words or social smiling
       • ASD TRIAD
         • 3. Imagingation
           • lack of creative, pretend play. Won’t be role play, object substitution
           • 2. Communication
             • talking about only one thing, one sided interaction (more about self), copies words like a parrot (echoliac). 
             • 1. Socialisation
               •  ​do not want to play with other kids, no interested in other people, limited eye contact.
               • Doesn't play with others
               • displays indifference
             • Echoic, copies words like a parrot
             • No eye contact
             • Talks heaps about only one topic
           • Lack of creative play
         • HAVE TO BE PRESENT
       • Non triad features
         • DON'T HAVE TO BE PRESENT
         • Restricted interests
           • Desire for sameness
             • don't like change, and need to have routine
             • Islets of ability (strenghts and weaknesses in IQ aspects)
               • Savant abilities
                 • Usually in math, music, memory or art
                 • Excellent rote memory
                 • Harder to diagnose due to high functioining and being at the light end of the spectrum
       • Autism Causes:
         • Genetic
           • 3:1 or 4:1 males;Females
             • 50% more likely if sibling has autism
               • 90% more likely if monozygotic twin has autism
                 • much greater in MZ than dizygotic twins,
                 • twin that doesn't have it will still have issues with language and social abilities
                   • Dicordinant (one has it, one doesn't)
           • What about family/relatives?
             • Piven et al.,
               • Compared relatives of children with autism to relatives of Down's sydrome. -Higher rates of social and communication deficits as well as stereotyped behaviours (e.g., handflapping) found in relatives of children with autism than Down's
             • Smalley et al.,
               • BEFORE BIRTH OF CHILD WITH AUTISM -64% have a relative with depression -In families with tubersclerosis, 19% had depression and 5% had a phobia
             • Personality characteristics
               • Yirmya et al.,
                 • Parents and siblings (especially males) of child with autism tend to be aloof, shy, have few friendships, odd conversation, under or over informative on topics
             • Occupation
               • Studentswith affective relative: - More likely to have studied math, engineering, physics - Fathers of child with autism: engineer - English or lit more likely to have depression (not related to autism) - granfathers are similar -female side do not show this trend 
         • Biological
           • When MZ are dicordinant, the twin with Autism likely had delivery issues
             • Swallowed marconium or had oxygen issues
             • At least 100 genes involved
               • Brain areas like cerebellum, limbic system, amygdala, hippocampus
                 • Isn't a deficit in brain areas, but a deficit in connectivity in the brain areas. Like how they communicate with each other.
                 • Reduced white matter
                   • reduced white matter in low weight babies with enlarged ventricals
                   • Then, a rapid growth of grey and white matter in first two years
                     • Then a reduction in growth at 2-12 years
                       • Only 10% of normal brain growth
                       • Due to
                         • Lack of interaction with people and environment
                         • Lack of communication and learning
                 • Frontal overgrowth of neurons:
                   • Grows too large, too fast and then slows down and is heavily pruned
                     • Likely miswired due to such a large number of neurons
                       • Created at 10-20 weeks and leads to connectvity issues 
                   • Frontal cortext grows quickest
                     • area for emotion and social interaction
                     • 67% overgrowth
           • Brain
         • Psychological
           • CHAT: Checklist for autism in toddlers
             • Protodeclaritive pointing
             • Pretend play
             • Gaze monitoring
               • Tend not to look at others faces
                 • Tend not to follow gaze or engage in protodeclatitive pointing
                   • Look less at people and more at objects
                     • Dont shift gaze between object and people as much as controls
                       • = a lack of social referencing
             • Study and follow up
               • Tested 16000 children at 18 months old. 12 failed all 3 tests 10 our of the 12 diagnosed with autism at 3.5 years Of 22 children who failed either pretend play or pretend and/or pointing, 15 (68%) diagnosed with language delay (none diagnosed with autism). ● Follow Up Study: ○ 7 years. ○ Were 19 children identified as having autism by CHAT at 18 months. ○ Were 50 at 7 years (CHAT identified 38% of children with autism). 
           • ToM impairment
             • Do children with autism understand ToM?
               • Baron-Chohen et al., 1985
               • Does seeing lead to knowing in Autism?
                 • Baronn-Cohen and Goodhart
                   • One doll looks in the box, another doll just lifts it. 12 children in each group  RESULTS: -children with autism aren't worse on all ToM tasks relative to children with low IQ (e.g., understanding emotion-desire). -but tend to be worse on most  ToM tasks
             • Problems with ToM accounting for autism
               • Doesn't account for NON-triad factors
                 • Problem 1: - Restricted interests: (due to lacking in social interactions) -Does well for many factors - cannot explain the islet of abilitity like the savant abilities Problem 2: -What about the people that pass ToM tests? Test not hard enough? -Could be due to aruthmitic and conscious understanding done purposefully 
                 • Account for TRIAD:
                   • Social interation, communication and imagination: - not good if you have poor ToM  
               • Hadwin: false belief
                 • Taught children (4-13 years) who had autism how to pass false belief tasks and looked at it's effect on communication with others. Conversational ability (ability to expand on conversation) and use of mental state terms in speech. Results:  -didn't use knowledge in everyday interactions even when taught about reason about mental states.  There was no general communication improvement even after being taught about mental states. IMPLICATION: harder for them to understand mental states in real life.
               • ToM 2: how those who are not diagnosed with autism are affected:
                 • Klin et al, 2002 Adolescents and young adults with autism:  look more at mouths in social situations whereas typical adults just look at eyes Greater mouth looking = better social adjustment in Autism Greater object looking = worse 
             • defciit
           • Cental coherence
             • Came about as the ToM couldn't explain all of the non-triad features or the talented minority of Autism. Definition: Drawing together diverse information to construct higher-level meaning. - bringing all aspects together to understand the thing is a whole, rather than many parts.  e.g., ambiguous word "pear" or "pair" said in a sentence, we know what one it is based on the surrounding context in the sentence.  People with autism struggle with this.
             • Cognitive deficit or style?
               • Deficit: leads to poorer perfomance on all situations style: leads to advantages in some situations and deficits in others
             • general processing: style
             • illusions 2D:
               • 2D: condition: Autisitc children don't have issues with titchener illusions (is the middle circle larger or smaller?) as they automatically disemble central circles (pull it apart automatically)
               • illusions 3D:
                 • 3D condition: removes embedding and eliminates group differences
             • Empirical evidence: Shah and frith 1983
               • How many triangles are in this image test  (image with lots of triangles hidden within a shopping trolly). Typical development find this very difficult as we have a tendency to view everything holistically. Out of a score of 25, Autistic children were sitting at 21 and controls were at 15.  As people with autism have a weak central coherence (meaning they can't bring everything together to the one shape) they do much better on this task than controls. 
             • Wechester: Block design task
               • (shape with 4 triangles making up a diamond, you either have a full diamond, or one preseperated into 4 triangles) Autism condition: had a superior performance to controls when design is not presegmented but did not change when it was presegmented as it was an automatic skill, they gained no benefit from it Control: prefered the segmented  CONCLUSION: they see constituent parts due to weak central coherence. 
             • Weak central coherence
               • Advantages: tasks where processing of parts in required, rather than processing of wholes Disadvantages: tasks where they need to consuder the whole (not parts)
             • Disambiguation of homographs
               • e.g., she had a pink bow e.g., she did a deep bow -Compard children with autism and controls matched up for reading age. - Children with autism picked most frequent pronounciation (5-7/10 correct) -Normal/dyslexic controls used context (7-9/10 correct) -Able children with autism were good at decoding single words, but bad when contextual information was needed, i.e., whole sentence processing
               • Meaningless sounds
                 • Pattern: ruc, mit, ruc,mit, ruc, mit random: ruc, ruc, mit, ruc, mit, ruc, mit, mit Results: controls recalled patterns bettern than random sound controls No difference in skill level with those with autism. This is because children with autism do not see the while, they do not belnefit from patterns in the sounds, but can memorise each thing as an individual factor. 
             • Genetic link in central coherence
               • Block design, embedded figures:
                 • fathers of autistic children group were faster than controls
                 • Titchener illusion:
                   • Fathers of autistic children were less suceptable to the illusion There is a broader phenotype of autism amongst relatives of individuals of autism. This includes behaviours (occupation, psychologial illnesses) and cognitive style (central coherence).
         • Environmental
           • HIgher levels of toxic metals: led, mercury, eg., in blood cells
             • Unsure if cause or consequence of autism

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