Summary Of Baron-Cohen's Theory-Of-Mind Theory

In 1987, Baron-Cohen introduced the theory-of-mind hypothesis of autism. In his hypothesis he gave an explanation for the social and communication disabilities in the autism disorder. Baron-Cohen’s tests showed that most children with autism with greater mental and verbal abilities than a four-year-old could not pass the same tests as the four-year-old could. These tests included the Sally-Anne false-belief task which involves a story in which Sally leaves her doll in a basket and goes out to play. While Sally is gone Anne removes the doll from the basket and places it into a box. When Sally gets back the child is asked where should Sally look for the doll or where will Sally look for the doll. Over the past few years, Baron-Cohen’s …show more content…
Although they still verbally answer incorrectly, this shows that they do have an understanding of false-belief. When the test was performed with autism children they did not look in the correct location and answered verbally incorrectly as well. The research performer, Ruffman, argues that autistic children lack social insight even though some can pass the tasks. These findings show that even adults with autism that pass the theory-of-mind tasks use different parts of the brain than non-autistic people. People without autism use the prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal junction that is involved in social-cognitive skills. The adults with autism use only areas that work during general problem-solving. So far, little research has been done on autistic symptoms related to the theory-of-mind, but old studies now show little significance. A study has been performed on a large group of autistic school children with the tasks developed by Steele. This research separated the effects of age, IQ, and language, and found that all autistic children have deficits in social reciprocity and communication skills with a difference in