Ef And Theory Of Mind

Socialization deficits are a major source of impairment regardless of cognitive or language ability for individuals with ASD. Furthermore, social skill deficits do not remit with development. Indeed, impairment and distress may increase as children approach adolescence because the social milieu becomes more complex and the child becomes more aware of their social disability” (White, 2006, p. 1858) As Dr. White mentioned social deficiency is not a situation that goes away with age and can have lifelong effects if not addressed by an intervention to help the child to learn acceptable and expected social behavior. These social impairments manifest themselves in many varying ways and degrees such as “speech, linguistic conventions and interpersonal interaction.” (White, 2006, p. 1858) Problematic areas include impairments in turn-taking in conversation and the ability to understand other’s perspective, proper use of pitch and inflection in their speech, obsessively dwelling on certain topics, difficulty in expressing and understanding emotions, and difficulty with nonliteral language uses such as metaphor and sarcasm. These impairments make communication with others difficult and uncomfortable for the ASD child and can cause a cascading effect, causing them to withdrawal from social situation out of frustration with their inability and embarrassment, or cause peers to distance themselves from the ASD child because of this seemingly awkward behavior and

Ogletree, B. T., Morrow-Odom, K. L., & Westling, D. (2015). Understanding the brain–behavior relationship in persons with ASD: Implications for PECS as a treatment choice. Developmental neuro-rehabilitation, 18(2),

People understand each other using cognitive skills, an example of this is mindreading. Mindreading abilities also referred to as the theory of mind (ToM) is acknowledging that other people have mental states, such as understanding that others have desires, motives, beliefs and intentions (Hewson, 2015a). This is generally an essential, undemanding skill for social interaction. Thereby, this essay will evaluate how psychology has helped to explain how people understand each other by firstly, explaining how different aspects of ToM have been studied. Additionally, Heider and Simmel’s (1944) study of geometric shapes will be explored to demonstrate how people interpret other people’s behaviour, even in animation. Subsequently, Autism

Theory of mind refers to the ability to make full mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions, imagination, emotions, etc.) that trigger action. Child with autism has difficulty to understand others thoughts which consider, according to the theory of mind, as the core cognitive deficit in autism.

Mindreading is defined as the ability to “make sense of other people and to coordinate our behavior with theirs” (Bermudez, 354). Many cognitive scientists believe the theory of mind mechanism (TOMM) is important to mindreading. These scientists contend that autistic individuals suffer from an impairment to this theory of mind module. However, others have argued that theory of mind, which is “the ability to form beliefs about the mental states of others”, is not a modular ability, but instead the result of the interaction of many different cognitive skills. In their paper “Generous or Parsimonious Cognitive Architecture? Cognitive Neuroscience and Theory of Mind,” Philip Gerrans and Valerie E. Stone take this view of theory of mind. I will review this paper and its arguments, then address the response to Gerrans and Stone made by Carl Hildebrand.

This study done by Wallace et al. (2016a) was one of the first to look at how EF impairments impact daily living or adaptive abilities of adults with autism and argued EF should be a main focus of clinicians in the assessment and treatment of adults with autism, just as EF is a main focus with children who have autism.

Autism is a rare developmental disorder that affects approximately four in every ten thousand children (Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 1985). Employing a clinical perspective, Kanner (1943) (as cited in Sachs, 1995) was the first to provide a description on the disorder of autism. However, in the 1970s, Wing (1970) (as cited in Sachs, 1995) applied a cognitive perspective in describing the mental structure of autism. This essay will therefore argue that autism is characterized by the lack of theory of mind (Premack & Woodruff, 1978, as cited in Baron-Cohen et al., 1985), which is a cognitive mechanism. It will further outline empirical evidence derived from the review of two studies, collectively known as false belief tasks. The Sally-Anne

The literature surrounding metamemory, a subjects’ awareness of their own memory performance and how they use their knowledge to contribute to their learning is vitally important to the understanding of the intricacies of ASD (Wojcik et al, 2012). Wojcik et al’s (2012) research has determined that when children with autism were exposed to the feeling-of-knowing task that the majority of people with autism accurately recognized the feeling-of-knowing for semantic stimuli, but did not perform well when asked to recall episodic information (Wojcik et al, 2012). Through this analysis Wojcik et al (2012) determined that children with autism did not suffer from generalized deficits in metamemory, the results show that the metamemory in episodic memory is only memory system impaired. Like previous studies Wojcik et al (2012) have strengthened the idea that people with autism have difficulty remembering factual information, not emotionally driven information. Southwick et al (2011) studied how non-verbal individuals with ASD recall certain stimuli, where they found no significant differences in the retention and recall of information pertaining to the stimuli between their autistic population and the control group. However, Southwick et al (2011) did find that there was a difference in retention and recall between autistic individuals who had high verbal IQ vs. low verbal IQ. The results of the findings indicate that normal controls and ASD individuals do not exhibit significant differences in memory retention and recall. Southwick et al (2011) did find that the verbal ability of ASD individuals did affect the amount of information that was retained and successfully

The past 20 years has seen much interest in the development of cognitive profiles and mentalising ability, particularly in how they may account for some characteristics of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Two of the most influential theories to date are: (i) Weak Central Coherence theory (WCC), which posits that those with WCC focus on detailed (local) features and fail to apply a global context in understanding their environment (Frith & Happe, 1994); and (ii) Theory of Mind (ToM), also referred to as ‘mentalising’, which relates to the ability to recognise ones’ own or others’ mental states (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Rast & Plumb, 2001).

In this review, it was noted that planning and flexibility, appeared to be exclusive to autism in one study, and these mechanisms repeatedly demonstrated impairments in Classic tasks such as the Tower of Hanoi (TOH), which measures planning, and the Wisconsin Card Test (WCST) which measures flexibility. Adapted computer models of the WCST were approaching significance, however, the TOH computer model only showed significant impairment when the task become more complex. Cognitive activation studies suggest, frontal regions seem to be strongly related to rigidity, perseveration and set shifting; planning and flexibility. The complex nature of neural networking, however, makes it difficult to conclude which networks relate to which particular EF mechanism. There is further evidence, however, for flexibility impairments using the

Describe what evolutionary psychologists mean when they employ the term ‘theory of mind’. Use examples and research studies from Book 1, Chapter 2 to show why this theory is important in evolutionary psychology.

All individuals must be able to make transitions from one activity or from one setting to another throughout the day. Whether at home, school, or in the workplace, transitions naturally occur frequently and require individuals to stop an activity, move from one location to another, and begin something new. Researchers report that 25% of a school day is spent in transition activities; such as putting personal items in designated locations like lockers, moving from classroom to classroom, going to the cafeteria, coming in from the playground and gathering needed materials to start working (Sainato, Strain, Lefebvre, & Rapp, 1987). Individuals with ASD have demonstrated a greater difficulty in shifting attention from one task to another or accepting

Furthermore, the main results showed that Theory of Mind in Alzheimer Disease deficit is characterized not only by difficulties inferring someone’s belief about reality, which has already been shown in previous studies but also by difficulties attributing knowledge to a person who takes part in a dialogue or

FCT has been shown to be effective when used with individuals of all ages. From children as young as 3 years old to adults, FCT is an effective way to increase communication, independence and the quality of life for many individuals including those with ASD’s. Through FCT, learners are taught appropriate behaviors to use in place of problem behaviors that serve the same function. An FBA should be completed to determine if a proposed replacement behavior will serve the same function before implementing this strategy.

Many individuals believe that the mind is uniquely theirs, yet they fail to distinguish between the ideas of ownership and privacy of the mind. Ownership, as property, and privacy are two separate concepts in relation to the mind and mind reading. Privacy refers to the moral rights and ability to give consent, whereas ownership I will define as obtaining and maintaining control over a given thing. For the purpose of this paper, I will define the mind in terms of memory and storage of knowledge. Taking Clark and Chalmers’ Extended Mind Hypothesis and Jesper Ryberg’s claim for privacy of the mind, this paper will explore the relationship of privacy and ownership of the mind by looking at it through multiple lenses.