Theory of Mind revisted

In this video i really enjoyed the way Uta Frith starts off by kinda defining what Theory of Mind is.  That it really is not a theory because theory would mean that it can be measured and tested over and over again.  I believe she suggested that theory of mind is more of a social behavior and that the title should be “Theory” of mind.  Because of this way of thinking, that it is just a social behavior, it can be theorized that it can be taught to an individual with ASD.  Many people with ASD are taught scripts on how to interact with others and deal with emotions and other internal behavior.

When it comes to assessment and theory of mind it can be very difficult due to the ability of the individual and their lack of being able to communicate properly.  As said in the video individuals can say that they ‘do not know’ just because they lack either the verbal capacity to state how they feel or maybe even the vocabulary in which to properly label what is going on emotionally.  This can be particularly difficult with students who are non verbal and rely on a device output device or other means of communication to express their needs or feelings. 

In my classroom I have multiple students who are working on just identifying emotions of others.  The hope for them is to be able to identify the basic concept and form of the facial expression of the emotion.  This will be a base of the skill and hopefully the students will be able to generalize it to other in the future.  The real difficult part of this skill is trying to relay the identification of these emotions back on to themselves when they are going through these emotions.  It can be easy to ID the emotions but to vocalize what you are feeling can be difficult but hopefully by building a vocabulary and identification of facial features we will be able to give my students an advantage and ability to communicate how they feel on any given day.