'Theory of Mind' - how would you know if a young child with limited communication has it?

[heartinthecountry]

This has been on my mind a bit since watching the 'Real Rainman' programme the other night. My dd has absence of the corpus callosum like Kim and one thing they said was that many individuals with ACC didn't have any 'theory of mind'. I know this is something also common in autism.

DH reckons dd does have theory of mind because she does seem to show some understanding of what we are thinking e.g she has a few little 'jokes' where she seems to understand they will make us laugh or if she manages to get hold of her dummy she does this look like she knows she's not supposed to have it.

But is that really 'theory of mind'? Or could it just be learned responses? Am intrigued about how I could 'test' whether she does have TOM when her language is very very limited.

Any thoughts?

There are lots of aspects to theory of mind. DS1 despite being severely autistic can tease us and knows to hide things if he doesn't want his brothers to get them. One of the guys I worked with said they found that people with autism often have theory of mind in that sense but fails other aspects of things known as false belief tasks. Testing those individually will be more technical- and prob impossible in children like ours!

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That's what I meant HITC- testing for TOM or ability to pass false belief tasks is going to involve tests that require a similar level of reasoning to the Sally-Anne test, so its not possible to do in our kids. However your dd sounds as if she reacts in a similar way to ds1 and therefore yes she does understand that you can react and think differently from her at a basic level.

Thanks baka - that's kind of what I was thinking. No way that dd's understanding would even get as far as knowing what I was asking on something like Sally-Ann test (thanks though Twiglett). I guess maybe it is only something I will really be able to find out as she gets older.

I have often wondered this about Ds2 also. I don't think I could get him to understand the Sally-Anne test or be sure enough of his language to trust the answer. However he is definitely aware of people having different dislikes or likes to him so he might say "I will have toast for breakfast and Mummy has porridge", or "Ds1 wants (to watch) Hercules and I want The Koala Brothers". Do you think that shows some theory of mind?

I think it does Saker, especially if he says it without prompting from you. I've also wondered this about DS2. I sometimes think he has TOM to a certain degree as, like HITC's DD, he will repeat something if it makes us laugh. But it's so hard to tell when he doesn't have the language skills to express what he understands. I was pleased today at his music class - a little girl bumped her head and was crying. DS2 made the sign for 'sad' on my face. I said 'Yes, she's sad. She banged her head' and he said 'I'm sorry'. Is that theory of mind? The sceptical part of me says it's a learned response - we usually say 'I'm sorry you're hurt' if he falls over, for example. The proud mummy part was dead chuffed!