Here is a paper on Autism and Theory of Mind as tested:
http://autismtruths.org/pdf/3.%20Does%20the%20autistic%20child%20have%20a%20theory%20of%20mind_SBC.pdf
The abstract includes:
We use a new model of metarepresentational development to predict a cognitive
deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in
childhood autism. One of the manifestations of a basic metarepresentational ca-
pacity is a ‘theory of mind’. We have reason to believe that autistic children lack
such a ‘theory’. If this were so, then they would be unable to impute beliefs to
others and to predict their behaviour. This hypothesis was tested using Wimmer
and Perner’s puppet play paradigm. Normal children and those with Down’s
syndrome were used as controls for a group of autistic children. Even though
the mental age of the autistic children was higher than that of the controls, they
alone failed to impute beliefs to others. Thus the dysfunction we have postula-
ted and demonstrated is independent of mental retardation and specific to
autism
It seems to be rather conclusive that Autistics can have a deficit in theory of mind. Has anyone done a study on the vocabulary used by specific autistic kids at various ages? Are they even able to talk about transferring a message from one person to another if they don’t realize that other people think more than superficially?
Specific words not used by any autistics (or a few subtypes on the autism spectrum) should indicate some relationship to the theory of mind. I would expect any kind of thought that involves another person acting normally would be difficult or impossible given this experimental evidence.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2014 7:02 AM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '; 'John F Sowa'
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] [Corpora-List] CFP: Special Research Topic on "Models of Reference" (Frontiers in Psychology)
The email below was posted on Corpora, but I think Ontologists also have a lot to gain from this research. This is a very interesting topic – how autism deficits affect the patient’s “Theory of Mind” since those are often patients with deep communication deficits. How autistic kids grow and communicate must have some valuable information about how the mind works.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From: corpora-bounces@xxxxxx [mailto:corpora-bounces@xxxxxx] On Behalf Of Albert Gatt
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2014 12:25 AM
To: corpora@xxxxxx; elsnet-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Corpora-List] CFP: Special Research Topic on "Models of Reference" (Frontiers in Psychology)
** Call for papers — apologies for cross-posting **
Special Research Topic of Frontiers in Psychology on “Models of Reference”
- 9 February 2015: Abstract Submission
- 5 July 2015: Full paper deadline
More information on this research topic and on how to submit can be found here.
Guest Associate Editors are:
- Kees van Deemter (University of Aberdeen, UK)
- Emiel Krahmer (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)
- Albert Gatt (University of Malta, Malta)
- Roger P.G. van Gompel (University of Dundee, UK)
This Research Topic concerns psychological and computational models of reference. Reference is a key phenomenon in human communication, which anchors utterances to the world. Reference, often achieved by referring expressions (‘this topic”, “it”, “the chair in front of you”), is studied throughout Cognitive Science and Linguistics
.
The importance of this Topic has been acknowledged through the award of recent projects, such as EPSRC-REFNET “An Interdisciplinary Network Focussing on Reference” and NWO-VICI “Bridging the gap between psycholinguistics and computational linguistics: The case of Referring Expressions”. It has been the topic of three workshops associated with the Annual Cognitive Science conference, PRE-CogSci 2009. 2011, 2013 and of Special Issues in Topics in Cognitive Science (2012) and Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience (2014) as well as The RefNet Summer School and Workshop in Edinburgh (August 2014).
This Topic welcomes contributions on debates in the study of reference which have a wide significance. Examples include:
- Debate 1: Theory of Mind use. A long tradition in psycholinguistics emphasises that communication relies on shared knowledge between speaker and hearer. Recent studies, however, cast doubts on people’s ability to use “theory of mind” in many situations. Reference is the key battleground in this debate.
- Debate 2: Rationality. Rationality is central to many (e.g., Gricean and Game Theoretic) models of human behaviour. However, models based on rationality struggle to account for certain types of referential overspecification, which instead suggest “fast heuristics” in the style of Kahneman & Tversky.
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Debate 3: Variation. Language production shows substantial differences, both between and within speakers. There is, however, no agreement yet as to how variation should be modelled.
In general, contributions are encouraged that focus on novel psychological and computational approaches to the comprehension and production of referring expressions.
Potantial topics include, but are not limited to:
- Models of referential collaboration in dialogue, including alignment
- References to times, events, and other “non-standard” types of reference
- Reference using logically complex expressions (e.g., quantified or relational descriptions)
- “Theory of mind” use in reference by children and people with autism
- Reference under uncertainty over hearers’ knowledge
- Development of reference
- Reference and the brain
- Social and contextual effects on reference production and comprehension
- Referential over- and underspecification
- Realisation of referring expressions (e.g., including prosody, gesture)
- The role of visual scene perception
About the journal: Frontiers in Psychology (2013 Impact Factor 2.8) is an Open Access journal that aims at publishing the best research across the entire field of psychology. Specialty Sections include Cognition, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience and Language Sciences. The latter hosts this Research Topic. Original Research Articles are welcomed, but also Revews, Theoretical Articles and Opinion Articles. Full details can be found in the author guidelines. All submissions will be peer-reviewed.
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