Metaphor and Theory of Mind

[doppelganger]

Jonah’s disappeared from the hall. Alone in the corridor, I peer into his room. He’s lying on his back on the blue-trimmed maple bed, his square-toed toddler feet in the air. He’s exploring his toes with total seriousness, like an unobserved intern with an imaginary patient.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

He doesn’t turn. “He touching toes,” he says earnestly . . .

In the quiet bedroom, I watch Jonah’s smooth contemplative face, the way he’s figuring out his feet. I desperately want him to be one of the chosen. Every parent out there wants the same thing.

"People in hell want ice water," whispers a bad voice.

- Christina Adams, from her book "A Real Boy," about her challenges as mother to an autistic child.​

Over the past few years, my interests have increasingly focused on cognition. I continue to find that matters of art, science and "spirit" all ultimately resolve to questions about how thought and information works, what identity is, and the relationship between cognition, language and reality. These ideas fascinate me specifically because of my research and experience with autism. As you may or may not know, our five year old son is mildly-moderately autistic. He seemed to be developing socially and verbally just fine until right around his first birthday. He fell very ill and retreated into a shell in which he was oblivious to the world around him. The little boy who would look me right in the eye and give me a huge smile, suddenly started looking right through me, as though I weren't even there. With great time, effort and money, we have recovered much of that little boy, but we still have a long way to go.

Research suggests that for many autistic children, the system for self-awareness does not turn on, turns on in a strange or incomplete way, or tuns on late. The result is that the neurological framework of identity necessary for socialization, creative play, and the ordering of thought (such as the creative use of language) doesn't develop for many autistic children the way it otherwise would. They may have no clear sense of "I am," and thus have no fixed reference around which to order the universe they experience.

This in turn may be related to something cognitive scientists call "theory of mind." By way of brief introduction, Wiki explains "theory of mind" as follows:

Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others. As originally defined, it enables one to understand that mental states can be the cause of—and thus be used to explain and predict—others’ behavior. Being able to attribute mental states to others and understanding them as causes of behavior means, in part, that one must be able to conceive of the mind as a “generator of representations” and to understand that others’ mental representations of the world do not necessarily reflect reality and can be different from one’s own.​

In his article "Does the autistic child have a 'theory of mind'?" (Journal of Cognition, 21 (1985) 37–46), cognitive scientist Simon Baron-Cohen (yes, the cousin of "Borat" star, Sacha Baron-Cohen), explains how social and linguistic behaviors in autistic children signify a lack of a clearly concretized sense of their thought process as a thing and therefore, the inability to relate to the "minds" of others. First, Baron-Cohen explains the experimental paradigm for assessing the operation of a "theory of mind":

A convincing demonstration that an explicit theory of mind is well within the capacity of the normal four-year-old has been given by Wimmer and Perner (1983). These authors developed an ingenious paradigm that can be used with very young children based on the case where the child’s own belief is different from someone else’s belief. In order to succeed on the task the child has to be aware that different people can have different beliefs about a situation. Hence this case provides the strongest evidence for the capacity to conceive of mental states.​

Baron-Cohen set up a test in which a group of children including some diagnosed as "high-functioning autistic," some diagnosed as "Downs Syndrome" with mental retardation and "normal" preschool age children as the "control." The children were shown two dolls named "Sally" and "Anne." They were asked to learn to identify which doll was which by name (the "Naming Question"), which all three groups were able to do. Then the experimenter put on a puppet show of sorts for the kids. He would have Sally place a marble in her basket, then leave the scene. Anne would then move the marble from Sally's basket to a box. The children were then asked "Where will Sally look for her marble?" (the "Belief Question"). To make sure that the children are tracking the events of the story, two additional "control questions" were asked - a "Reality Question" (Where is the marble, really?) and a "Memory Question" (Where was the marble in the beginning of the play?). A second trial was run in which a third location was added, as "Anne" put the marble in the experimenter's pocket.

All of the children were able to answer the Naming, Reality and Memory questions. It was in regard to the "Belief" question that the differences emerged. Although the "high functioning autistic" children were tested at a comparable mental and verbal "age" as the Down's syndrome and control kids, 80% of the autistic children failed the "Belief" question, while 85% of both of the other groups passed, correctly predicting where "Sally" would look for the marble by imagining "Sally's" state of mind. Discussing the results, Baron-Cohen explains his theory of why there was such a marked difference unique to the autistic children:

Our results strongly support the hypothesis that autistic children as a group fail to employ a theory of mind. We wish to explain this failure as an inability to represent mental states.
​

This conceptual framework for a "theory of mind" as a means of social and linguistic interaction and creativity has important applications outside of the study of autism. It appears that, as with any human ability, "theory of mind" is not an on/off sort of process, but a spectrum, with some cognitively "normal" people still having a limited ability to contemplate and understand the belief states of other people, and some having an exceptional ability to contemplate and understand the belief states of others. Thus, "theory of mind" is another way to think about/conceptualize the states of "ego development" or "moral development" and may explain the capacity of certain mystics and philosophers with a highly-developed penchant for shifting perspective and understanding the point of view and experiences of others.

Neural imaging studies of the brain have identified the medial frontal cortex, temporal poles and temporoparietal junction as the parts of the brain with the most electrical activity during "theory of mind" tasks. In particular, a type of brain cell called a "mirror neuron" seems to be the key agent in mental tasks associated with "theory of mind." Research confirms that the problems for autistic children appear to involve these "mirror neurons":

According to the new study, currently in press at the journal Cognitive Brain Research, electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings of 10 individuals with autism show a dysfunctional mirror neuron system: Their mirror neurons respond only to what they do and not to the doings of others . . . The human mirror neuron system is now thought to be involved not only in the execution and observation of movement, but also in higher cognitive processes -- language, for instance, or being able to imitate and learn from others' actions, or decode their intentions and empathize with their pain. Because autism is characterized, in part, by deficits in exactly these sorts of social interaction and communication skills, previous research has suggested that a dysfunctional mirror neuron system may explain the observed pathology. The current findings, the researchers say, lend substantial support to the hypothesis.​

Other recent studies confirm that an autoimmune reaction in the "white matter" (glial cells) of the brain causing what amounts to swelling, apparently disrupting the chemical and electrical signaling process in those specific parts of the brain related to "theory of mind" tasks. See "White Matter Structure In Autism" , Journal of Biological Psychiatry, 2004;55:323–326 ("areas of aberrant white matter were found between those gray matter regions activated in theory of mind tasks, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, temporoparietal junction, superior temporal sulcus, and the amygdala").

CONTINUED . . .

 

[doppelganger]

PART II

__________


This neurological explanation of belief states, and recognition of belief states in others, that underlies socialization and creative play is only a part of the picture of how we formulate and communicate meaning. Taking a lesson from my mirror neurons, it is important to remember that all the different disciplines that examine the mind, belief and meaning can function in harmony. This idea is expressed nicely by Arnold Modell in his book Imagination and the Meaningful Brain:

The investigation of meaning requires an interdisciplinary effort that includes the philosophy of language, linguistics, cognitive science, neurobiology, and psychoanalysis. All of these studies differ in their observational methods, and every specialist, like the proverbial blind men and the elephant, will approach the problem from their own perspective. I will claim that the third-person perspective of neuroscience, in its attempt to find the neural correlates of psychological processes, needs also to be augmented by the phenomenology of introspection and intersubjective knowledge of a two-person relationship.
​

Modell goes on to explain:

Metaphor is a fundamental and uniquely human cognitive ability, a primary form of cognition and thought that becomes secondarily incorporated into language… define metaphor . . . as a mapping or transfer of meaning between dissimilar domains (from a source domain to a target domain). Metaphor not only transfers meaning between different domains, but by means of novel recombinations metaphor can transform meaning and generate new perceptions. Imagination could not exist without this recombinatory process.​

 

[sandandfoam]

Very interesting post. I didn't know you had a child with autism. We looked at theory of mind last year in the context of language and meaning. It came up in terms of what Dan Sperber calls metarepresentations in relation to language and the evolution of thought, also in conversation and pragmatics and in Antonio Damasio's account of consciousness.
Your quote from Arnold Modell is spot on.
I have no experience of autism but I share your interest in "what identity is, and the relationship between cognition, language and reality".
Good post.
"With great time, effort and money, we have recovered much of that little boy, but we still have a long way to go." I hope you get there. I'm sure you will. It looks like Dads knowledge is the equal of many healthcare professionals.

 

[tomspug]

Very interesting. If you think about it, it is really amazing what children are able to accomplish with their minds, even though their actions and intentions appear simple. And I imagine this relationship between stimuli and cognition only gets more complex as we age.

It makes simple psychological cause and effect seem rather silly.

 

[Ozzie]

I read somewhere a metaphor from Leibnitz which kind of summarises your post.

Walking through a reductionist brain would be like marching through the corridors of a library.