Journal ArticleDOI
Recognition of mental state terms. Clinical findings in children with autism and a functional neuroimaging study of normal adults.
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TLDR
This simple mental state recognition task appears to relate to theory of mind, in that both the orbito-frontal cortex and the frontal-polar region are impaired in autism.Abstract:
BACKGROUND The mind's ability to think about the mind has attracted substantial research interest in cognitive science in recent decades, as 'theory of mind' No research has attempted to identify the brain basis of this ability, probably because it involves several separate processes As a first step, we investigated one component process-the ability to recognise mental state terms
METHOD In Experiment 1, we tested a group of children with autism (known to have theory of mind deficits) and a control group of children with mental handicap, for their ability to recognise mental state terms in a word list This was to test if the mental state recognition task was related to traditional theory of mind tests In Experiment 2, we investigated if in the normal brain, recognition of mental state terms might be localised The procedure employed single photon emission computerised tomography (SPECT) in normal adult volunteers We tested the prediction (based on available neurological and animal lesion studies) that there would be increased activation in the orbito-frontal cortex during this task, relative to a control condition, and relative to an adjacent frontal area (frontal-polar cortex)
RESULTS In Experiment 1, the group with autism performed significantly worse than the group without autism In Experiment 2, there was increased cerebral blood flow during the mental state recognition task in the right orbito-frontal cortex relative to the left frontal-polar region
CONCLUSIONS This simple mental state recognition task appears to relate to theory of mind, in that both are impaired in autism The SPECT results implicate the orbito-frontal cortex as the basis of this abilityread more
Citations
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Understanding Photos, Models and Beliefs: A Test of the Modularity Thesis of Theory of Mind.
Tony Charman,Simon Baron-Cohen +1 more
TL;DR: The authors found that participants with mental handicap were significantly more successful on the false belief task than those with autism on DeLoache's (1987, 1991) Model and Photograph tasks (which test understanding of the symbolic function of models and photographs).
Journal ArticleDOI
Theory of mind and epilepsy: what clinical implications?
Anna Rita Giovagnoli,Annalisa Parente,Flavio Villani,Silvana Franceschetti,Roberto Spreafico +4 more
TL;DR: This study evaluated the influence of selective ToM deficits on self‐appraisal, coping, and quality of life (QoL) in patients with focal epilepsy.
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Language, Space and Mind: The Conceptual Geometry of Linguistic Meaning
TL;DR: The Deictic Space Theory as discussed by the authors proposes a three-dimensional conceptual space that integrates attentional distance, temporal distance and epistemic distance, making it possible to unify a number of well known linguistic-conceptual phenomena, including tense, aspect, counterfactuals and deontic modality.
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Neuropragmatics: Extralinguistic pragmatic ability is better preserved in left-hemisphere-damaged patients than in right-hemisphere-damaged patients
TL;DR: The aim of the present study is to compare the pragmatic ability of right- and left-hemisphere-damaged patients excluding the possible interference of linguistic deficits, and shows that pragmatic performance is better preserved in left- Hemisphere-Damaged patients than in right-hemispheric-damaging patients.
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Social cognition and the prefrontal cortex.
TL;DR: The author focuses on the role of the prefrontal cortex in social behavior and presents a framework that provides cohesion of this research and proposes that this framework will be useful in guiding future social cognitive neuroscientific research.
References
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Book
Co-planar stereotaxic atlas of the human brain : 3-dimensional proportional system : an approach to cerebral imaging
TL;DR: Direct and Indirect Radiologic Localization Reference System: Basal Brain Line CA-CP Cerebral Structures in Three-Dimensional Space Practical Examples for the Use of the Atlas in Neuroradiologic Examinations Three- Dimensional Atlas of a Human Brain Nomenclature-Abbreviations Anatomic Index Conclusions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Does the autistic child have a theory of mind
TL;DR: A new model of metarepresentational development is used to predict a cognitive deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism.
Does the Autistic Child Have a''Theory of Mind''? Cognition
TL;DR: In this paper, a new model of metarepresentational development was used to predict a cognitive deficit in children with autism, which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism.
Journal ArticleDOI
Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind
David Premack,Guy Woodruff +1 more
TL;DR: This paper showed an adult chimpanzee a series of videotaped scenes of a human actor struggling with a variety of problems, some of which were simple, such as bananas vertically or horizontally out of reach, behind a box, and so forth; others were more complex, involving an actor unable to extricate himself from a locked cage, shivering because of a malfunctioning heater, or unable to play a phonograph because it was unplugged.