Dude. My paper is gonna ROCK! I fucking wrote this in . . . oh. shit. it's been an hour and fifteen minutes. I no longer feel the surge of pride and self-adulation. alas. here it is, anyway. It's gonna be really good, if I can stay awake.
Theory of Mind in Right Hemisphere Damaged (RHD) individuals: implications from performance on the ?false belief task.?
Abstract:
Theory of Mind (TOM) is the ability to reason about others? and one?s own mental states (Simon Baron Cohen et al, 1985). The false belief task has been used to test for competency in TOM for over 20 years. Several papers have identified problems with this method (German & Bloom, 2000; Siegal, 1991), yet it continues to be widely used. The purpose of the current paper is to point out the danger of inferring TOM deficit from failure, and to point out one serious misinterpretation of success on this task.
TOM was a term coined by Premack and Woodruff in a study on mentalizing in chimpanzees (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). It refers to the ability to reason about mental states, or propositional attitudes. The most commonly agreed upon mental states are Belief, Desire, and Pretense. It has been proposed that a deficit in TOM can account for the set of symptoms in autism. It has also been proposed that RHD individuals may constitute a population that displays an ?aquired TOM deficit? (Happe, 1999). In recent review article, Martin and McDonald (2003) present several possible models, one of which is TOM deficit, to account for the symptoms found in RHD. First I will review these symptoms, which can best be described as pragmatic deficits. Then I will review the evidence supporting the link between RHD and autism, as based in TOM deficit. I will specifically focus on evidence stemming from the false belief task, and point out research (Siegal, 1996; Surian & Siegal 2001) that shows that the arguments supporting this link are flawed. Next I will examine Seigal et al's research (on the false belief task), and show how the results have been misinterpreted. I will argue that, contrary to Seigal et. al.'s interpretation of their results implicating a "pragmatic language deficit," the results point to problems in executive fuctioning.
Oh shit. Forgot to post this. It's going GREAT! Have two pages already! What now. Sing it Beta Band.
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the guys: philogynist jaime tony - the gals:raymi raspil
