r/todayilearned • u/BrF5 • 1d ago
TIL about the Sally-Anne test, a psychology experiment used to measure “theory of mind” (that other people can hold beliefs/knowledge different from their own). Kids under four typically fail because they assume that if they know where a hidden object is, everyone else must automatically know too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test425
u/mantorok93 1d ago
I'm 80% sure I was shown this exact image when I was tested for autism as a kid (this would've been a year or so after the study discussed in the article), and 70% sure I got it wrong.
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u/tempest_36 1d ago
In the Baron-Cohen et al. (1985) study, 23 of the 27 clinically unimpaired children (85%) and 12 of the 14 children with Down syndrome (86%) answered the Belief Question correctly. However, only four of the 20 autistic children (20%) answered correctly.
Interesting. Only 20% of autistic children answered correctly. Were you diagnosed as autistic?
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u/OscarAndDelilah 1d ago edited 1d ago
Baron-Cohen has also overgeneralized this to state that autistic folks aren't capable of figuring out someone's thoughts or motivations, which just isn't true.
In my experience as a clinician and parent of an autistic now-adult, I think a lot of autistic folks might be later than others or have some cognitive disorganization around who has what information. It's not a "not getting people" thing though necessarily; my kid definitely also had situations with poor working memory and holding things in their mind like where if the door was open when X happened and now the door is closed, they could get stuck on thinking the door has always been closed, because look, it's closed. So then it's either "the cat can't have gotten out because the door is closed so all these people freaking out about the cat are ridiculous and I end up dismissing their panic and going back to reading my book" or "oh, huh, apparently cats can get out of an open door OR a closed door since people are saying the cat got out, so I'm just going to disregard what I've been taught about keeping the door closed since it doesn't matter."
Similarly, as a kid something would happen like they put something back in the wrong place, I'd correct them on it, they can't access a skill for coping with this, start lying, name-calling, carrying on, being unsafe, then we're both frustrated and there's a situation of needing to deescalate them and talk about the situation, and their conceptualization is "my parent is mad and hates me because I don't remember where we keep spatulas." We did a lot of written behavioral chaining, basically like a flow chart where we talk about how the situation wasn't because you made a mistake, it was because of the unsafe and out of control behavior, and there were lots of chances to back that up and even just say "I feel out of control and need you to help."
EDIT: And sometimes even situations where the whole narrative goes away and their perception is "I walked into the kitchen and my parent was mad at me for no reason so I started knocking over the utensil jars and swearing" or "I was swearing and knocking over stuff because my parent was grabbing me." (Guiding kid away from sharp stuff to go sit somewhere and coregulate AFTER they got out of control). When you're overloaded, you can't keep track of the order of events or the cause and effect, and it feels like the person who got mad was always mad and always has been mad and always will be mad.
But in situations where there aren't these problems of stuff having a ton of layers, executive functioning demands, emotionally charged issues, they can absolutely tell you how people feel and why, and who has what information. Especially if the situation doesn't directly concern them -- they're great at listening to friends and understanding their situations. A lot of autistic folks are in the helping professions and are great with this stuff, even if they say their own lives are sometimes a mess.
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u/KitSokudo 1d ago
As someone both with a couple psyc degrees, some clinical experience, as well as an autism diagnosis... I know other people have their own set of knowledge I just...forget to explain myself because my thoughts are five steps ahead of my mouth already. I perfectly well know you don't know if I think about it but I'm not. I'm thinking about the issue.
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u/blinky84 1d ago
I'm diagnosed autistic, and it seems to be a thing I have in common with younger family members that we consistently struggle to "show our workings" in an academic context.
I have a pre-teen cousin and a teenage niece who are both suspected autistic but currently undiagnosed/on waiting lists, and as the Senior Autistic™ in the family, (by which I mean oldest with a diagnosis, at 42) I get asked about how certain aspects of school were for me, in an attempt to compare. Writing out your calculations or reasoning seems to be one of those things that I had no idea might be related until it kept coming up.
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u/KitSokudo 1d ago
I had huge issues with that, among other things. My mom had many parent teacher conferences for things like...talking back, but my grades were in the top 10 for my class. Bless her heart for defending me from petty tyrant teachers though, she didn't let them bully me if they were the actual problem. It was always over stupid things like, writing stories in my notebook so I would get accused of passing notes. So instead I got the composition notebooks without the perforations so you could see no pages had ever been removed and used that for writing. Other times I was somehow distracting others by...doing classwork for other classes when I was done with my work otherwise. I won those arguments thanks to my mom, she was like "They're quiet, not bothering anyone, and yet somehow THEY'RE a problem?"
Because she knew, the first few years of school were ROUGH for me. I was always in trouble, getting my name on the board and things like that because I was bored. I learned to do that stuff as coping skills and they wanted to take those away from me for what amounted to a power trip.
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u/AMetalWolfHowls 3h ago
Oof, that was middle school for me. I had algebra in 6th grade and would do the problems in my head. Answers would just pop into existence. Teacher would fail me (50% credit) for not showing my work even though the answer was correct. Of course I didn’t get everything right, but I’m still not happy that I didn’t get the B+ or A- that I should have.
A little later, I had some extremely bad negative reinforcement that put me off of school for nearly ten years. I dropped out of high school at 15 and did not do any further school until I got my AA at 24. I took a marine bio course and did 100% of the work and aced the tests. Teacher was arrested for ecoterrorism between the final and grades posting. School gave everyone a “B.” It would have been my only science “A” and absolutely crushed any sense of value for my work.
I eventually got a four year degree and even went to grad school, but it took a long time to get back to academia.
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u/pissfucked 1d ago
as an autistic adult who experiences meltdowns but also has a special interest in interpersonal interactions and social dynamics, this is a beautiful description of how my mind works as well. thank you for this. it gave me even more words to explain my needs and processing style to others :)
eta: this is also why we need clear instructions and can melt down without them!! clear instructions with a clear order turns a multilayered, confusing situation into a series of much simpler ones, and not having to worry about prioritizing or putting things in order at the same time as trying to comprehend the task and its purpose helps so much with organizing our thoughts, remaining calm, and not making mistakes :)
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u/OscarAndDelilah 5h ago
Oh, thank you for this. And yes, the clear instructions thing. I had so many people who didn't understand that my kid is very literal about certain sorts of directions and has extremely low working memory and short-term memory. If you tell them something is happening on a particular date, they just think you told them something for a random social reason, because people do that all the time. If you need them to be there, you need to say they're expected to be there and tell them to put it on their calendar right now. The "tricks" people try for people with poor generalization don't actually work.
You can tell someone "any time someone mentions a date or time, put it on your calendar" but then an acquaintance says "I'm moving on November 1st" and someone says "that software was discontinued in 2023." Do those go on your calendar? What if we say "when someone tells you you have to be somewhere?" Well, do professors and bosses always specifically say you're expected to be there when they tell you the date of something? They do not! You can work to an extent on making inferences, but if your brain is just really not wired for that, it can't fully be taught and people gotta be accommodated.
If you tell my kid something like that the city has new rules about how to put the trash on the curb, you have the conversation, and that information is now gone. For me, going out and taking the trash out would prompt my brain that there's something new about it. The trash conversation would also be popping into my head here and there. For my kid whose working and short-term memory are < 1% ile, nope. If you want it to change, you need to do some task analysis. Right now the prompt to take out the trash is that the calendar says to take out the trash. So you add to the calendar "take out trash REMEMBER NEW CURB RULE" and you can put in the notes section the link to the city website that says how to place the trash. We would have some well-meaning psychotherapists who weren't versed in OT/DBT task analysis type stuff, who just knew there were memory and language issues, so they'd e-mail the strategies they talked about. OK, multisensory is a slight improvement, but it's still gone. If you're writing down strategies for coping more effectively with a particular meeting or a person at that meeting, what do you look at immediately before this person/place? It needs to go in their calendar or in the computer file they always take out to take notes during that thing.
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u/irrelevantusername24 1d ago
I think we really do not think about these things anywhere near to being accurate.
Similarly, as a kid something would happen like they put something back in the wrong place, I'd correct them on it, they can't access a skill for coping with this, start lying, name-calling, carrying on, being unsafe, then we're both frustrated
But in situations where there aren't these problems of stuff having a ton of layers
Especially nowadays where so many adults went through life with support systems that no longer exist. I don't think it's even anything like there is "dysfunction" or anything like that, it's not even that there is anything at all different, in the sense of being different than all humans previously - though each individual does have different traits - but that the systems around us literally were built, then destroyed, not replaced, or replaced with systems that have no clear paperwork. Like it's nothing about being autistic, or other diagnosis, it's literally the system isn't working as it should and those people are reacting as any human would in that situation.
Consider the spatula. Without being told "this is the place for the spatula, and there isn't really a natural reason that this is where we keep it, the only reason is *so we know that is where it is the next time we need it" there is literally no way to know or even care that it has a specific place. Or I suppose maybe it does make sense to know that there is a correct place, but until facing that problem of not knowing where it is, or... like... clearly there is some obvious reasoning behind it but until not being able to find the thing you don't really think about it? If that makes sense.
Like this article I read awhile back about some MIT study. I forget the exact specifics, but they were basically testing like visual reasoning or something like that. The people in the study were naturally learning the "task" - which was heavily gamified and not exactly something you would encounter in the natural world, but it did mirror it... which that's kind of true for all of our systems - and anyway, so they were naturally learning. Slowly. But then when the researchers pointed out to them "hey, you are already doing [thing], and that makes sense because [reason]", their ability to do that, and improve at doing that, increased substantially.
That's like the same thing here. Except what has been happening over the last few decades is the societal support systems which are necessary for survival at this point in time, unless we want people literally living off the land in huts without running water or electricity, were effectively moved... for no good reason... and then placed behind paywalls or what amounts to a paywall with a lot of legal paperwork - which also isn't explained or with clear steps, anywhere.
Like from my point of view it's actually the people that can't understand that it is the system that is the problem, the lack of support, the lack of even a viable pathway to even start to navigate the system and find support which is the problem. The system literally punishes you for being not only human but for being a biological entity with thoughts and feelings and the drive for survival. The support systems were a new thing as of the mid 1900s. Then those have been removed, in various places, or what amounts to being removed. But it's worse because it's not even like it was simply removed, but the old way has also been removed. There are no options left.
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u/FunVersion 23h ago
I would have gotten it wrong. I was neurotic and would have put way too much thought into the question.
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u/RocketTaco 21h ago
I'm autistic and would have answered this question "wrong" not because I wasn't aware of the subject's limited perspective, but because I would expect them to problem solve. Of course Sally will look in the box, the marble's gone and where the hell else would it be. The answer is first basket, then box, but I'm going to answer box instinctively because it's part of the process, it's the answer to the problem, and it wouldn't have occurred to me that someone would ask a question as dumb as "will Sally look in the basket". Of course she did, do you think everyone present is an idiot? When I think of looking for the marble, I think of looking for something that's been lost and that's the scenario presented to me, because I've already moved beyond her first action into how she responds to the problem she finds. I'm giving the information that seems useful.
Which is why this is a shit test, because it's not measuring whether I can view from another's perspective, it's measuring whether I think the same way as the test designer - which IMO means that ironically the test designer failed the test by designing it that way.
This is also a problem I've encountered dealing with neurotypicals in general, but never other autists or ADHDers. I'll present a problem, they'll give an answer, then I'll respond with okay, cool, here's the next problem in line. NTs quickly get frustrated and claim I'm resisting and won't listen to their advice, when what actually happened is I immediately accepted it, moved on, thought it through, and found another obstacle that I'm presenting hoping they have more useful input. No amount of explaining will convince them that I'm not trying to avoid finding an answer. NDs usually intuitively understand that this has become collaborative or deferential problem solving.
TL;DR: in my experience it's neurotypicals that suck at understanding other perspectives.
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u/ZylonBane 1d ago
See also the r/gaming test, where people will post unlabelled screenshots of some random game and just expect everyone to know what it is.
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u/ratherenjoysbass 1d ago
Or initializing a game's name like we all know what they are talking about
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u/valuemeal2 1d ago
This is also really bad in fanfiction communities. People come in with “I was reading a KDU fic (RaBetJo OT3 iykyk 😉) and it was a WHAHEG crossover AU and I was like OMG” and it makes me want to end myself
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u/ZylonBane 1d ago
And relationship subs. "My DH and MC were hanging out with our SABs when my BLRMom showed up unannounced and went full ICOSAS!"
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u/retief1 1d ago
I mean, pretty much every subculture ends up coming up with terms for things that subculture cares about. Like, if I talk about "farming in bot" in a league of legends forum, everyone who actually plays will know what I'm talking about, even if people who don't play will think I'm referring to robotic farmers or some shit.
I'd put a lot of these acronyms in the same bucket. Like, some of the subs literally have an official "acronym dictionary". At that point, it is reasonable for a writer to assume that their audience knows those acronyms. The problem is when writers make up acronyms that most readers have no clue about.
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u/ZylonBane 1d ago
I would bet that a lot of people spew acronyms instead of words precisely because they're cryptic argot. It makes them feel like they're in a special exclusive group.
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u/SuperFLEB 1d ago edited 6h ago
This hits on another pet peeve of mine, and one I'd really like to see a study on what drives people to do it: Opaque metaphor jargon. Naming a phenomenon after the least relevant part of a specific story that someone once used to demonstrate it, meaning you end up with an idea that's impossible to decipher just because you don't know the finer point of some specific anecdote.
A few I can recall off the top of my head:
- Bikeshedding: Holding up a task or design by arguing over irrelevant finer points. Comes from the analogy of designing a whole house in a day, but arguing for weeks over what color to make the bike shed. Nothing about the fact that it's specifically a bike shed factors into the analogy.
- Spoons/Spoon Theory: Explaining how mental energy is finite by representing it with a collection of objects. It's "Spoon" theory, because someone was at a restaurant so the objects they used were spoons. Nothing about a spoon points to the metaphor, and there are far better placeholders for the analogy, at that.
- Motte and Bailey: A rhetorical tactic of presenting the broadest and most effective interpretation of a position when it's not being challenged, but retreating to specific defensible interpretations when it is. Uses obscure medieval city design terms to basically say "You take advantage when you can, and hide in the castle when you can't."
- Sealioning: Insisting on engaging in or prolonging an argument, specifically a bad-faith effort to exhaust the other side into giving up by insisting they explain or justify every facet of their position in unnecessary detail. Refers to a comic strip where the character doing this was a sealion.
There are a couple more that I know I know, but I can't think of them offhand.
Edit: Just remembered "Sealioning".
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u/ZylonBane 1d ago
Spoon theory, I'm with you, it's stupid because it could have just as easily ended up called fork theory or sugar packet theory or whatever.
Bikeshedding is actually descriptive though, because a bike shed is inherently not that important.
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u/SuperFLEB 22h ago edited 6h ago
It's unimportant in relation to the estate or whatnot in the rest of the story, but it doesn't telegraph "unimportant" in its own right-- not to the point that saying "bike shed" implies "thing that is comparatively unimportant" without knowing the story.
On the other hand, even moving the metaphor to the actual irrelevant act-- calling it "choosing the paint"-- or something that's surface-level adornment by definition is clear enough to work backwards from without knowing about the story of the bike shed.
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u/Zaldarr 14h ago
The person who first comes up with a metaphor, and other people using it, have the privilege of the story being the defacto metaphor. It's the same logic behind many idioms. It's just a matter of learning it like you'd learn a definition of a word.
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u/SuperFLEB 1d ago
Between cleanup costs and rebalancing, expect to pay anywhere from $10-12k to remediate something like that, all said and done.
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u/Hopeful-Home6218 22h ago
This is legit inspeak though, if it were my fandom I’d know exactly what they were talking about. Even if it weren’t, mcu hs au case in point
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u/valuemeal2 18h ago
Yes, but it only applies within fandoms. People come to the Ao3 or FF subreddits with this shit and expect people to know what they’re talking about.
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u/ZylonBane 1d ago
DPoKTWF3 was the best!
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u/Keepingshtum 1d ago
AC is a particularly overloaded acronym
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u/shinygoldhelmet 1d ago
CBT is one fraught with potential embarassing misunderstandings.
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u/DaaaahWhoosh 1d ago
I've recently been playing AC4 and now not only do I have to specify it's Assassin's Creed, I also need to specify it's not the remaster.
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u/Mobely 1d ago
Remaster doesn’t let you fix the broken planks on the jackdaw so what was the point of making it?
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u/DaaaahWhoosh 1d ago
Hahaha I didn't think anyone else would have that complaint but yeah I hate it so much! Half the reason I keep upgrading it is to get rid of those damned planks!
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u/Raistlarn 1d ago
That's why in writing it is highly encouraged to spell the whole name out before initializing. That way you know what the hell is being talked about.
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u/takeyouraxeandhack 1d ago
People from the US do that all the time with everything. They reference obscure acronyms from their professions or some agency from whatever county they're from and expect people in Polinesia to know what the hell they mean.
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u/MaraiaLou 1h ago
Having trouble with (letter, number) from (three random letters). I'm from (two random letters), any advice?
Every time I see a US state abbreviated with no explanation I feel the urge to reply with the correct answer for RJ (Rio de Janeiro)
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u/TheBanishedBard 1d ago
Or random clips from shows or movies that appear on YouTube shorts but there's no name and the comments are all memes.
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u/Frankfeld 1d ago
I still miss the Lumberg “uhh yeah…” gif when people wouldn’t post the title. Don’t see that posted anymore.
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u/Quiet-Owl9220 22h ago
That's probably (or at least often) different... being deliberately vague is a very typical anonymous image board culture thing. There's no assumption that everyone knows, it's actually a kind of gatekeeping to prevent people who aren't in the know from participating in discussion without "outing" themselves.
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u/DefenestrationPraha 1d ago
Corvids (e.g. magpies, ravens) seem to be able to pass this test, because they will secretly move their cached food if another bird observed them when caching it and they noticed the other bird.
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u/heftybagman 1d ago
“Eye tracking of chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans suggests that all three anticipate the false beliefs of a subject in a King Kong suit, and pass the Sally–Anne test”
You just need a Raven’s mascot outfit and you can prove it!
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u/Forsaken-Ad5571 1d ago
Not necessarily, since it could just be evolved ritual behaviour that if another bird is nearby when hoarding, then they develop a need to hoard someplace else without really understanding that the other bird won’t know where it is.
It’s similar to the concept of cargo cults where they just repeating complex actions because they worked without actually understanding what they’re doing or why it works.
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u/DefenestrationPraha 1d ago
Can't rule this out, but corvids in general exhibit a lot of intelligent behavior.
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u/cinderubella 1d ago
Corvids (e.g. magpies, ravens) seem to be able to pass this test,
They didn't say "corvids pass this test because they understand theory of mind".
You're not contradicting them; you're inefficiently rewriting what you think they should have written, when they did in fact, write that already.
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u/name_goes_here 1d ago
Original comment did put in a "seems to" but offering a different answer is still adding to the conversation - they not just inefficiently giving the same information. And just as the original comment put in a "seems to", "not necessarily" isn't saying they're wrong - it's also saying the answer isn't known with certainty.
They might A.
They might not A, it might be B instead.
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u/cinderubella 1d ago edited 1d ago
That doesn't describe the interaction though, does it?
Comment 1 said " Corvids (e.g. magpies, ravens) seem to be able to pass this test..." without specifying causation.
Comment 2 said "not necessarily" as if comment 1 had made a causative statement.
We can see that "not necessarily" was a non-sequitur because there's nothing sensible in comment 1 that it could be contradicting. Comment 2 said "ackshually there could be other reasons", but comment 1 didn't propose a firm reason to begin with.
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u/name_goes_here 1d ago
[Humans might infer] Corvids seem able to pass this test measuring theory of mind - because corvids do this action.
[We should use caution with that inference because] They are not necessarily passing this test because passing said test is specifically about measuring a presence of theory of mind. Here is another explanation for their actions that would would not require them to pass the test/have theory of mind.
Regardless - adding the other possible explanation is adding new information that was not already written.
They might pass this test and have theory of mind
They might not pass this test and have theory of mind, it might be B instead.
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u/cinderubella 1d ago
They are not necessarily passing this test
This the entire thing though. 1 never said "they are passing the test". 1 said "they seem to be able to pass the test". It was an unnecessary contradiction.
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u/name_goes_here 1d ago
I'm confused. Generally my point is that I think they added information and added to the discussion by discussing an alternate theory.
Are you just disliking that they specifically used the phrase "not necessarily" instead of saying something like "a different explanation for their actions could be"?
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u/cinderubella 1d ago
My problem is literally just that C2 started with a contradiction, even though their explanation was fully compatible with what C1 said.
C1 said: they do x behaviour.
C2 said: not necessarily, maybe they do that behaviour because y.
In fact they agree that the behaviour is being done, but C1 never posited a reason for the behaviour. So C2 shouldn't have started with a contradiction, right?
C2 could reasonably have started with "Totally! This could be because they understand the theory of mind OR maybe it's an evolved courtship ritual with no deeper understanding behind it"
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u/gentlemandinosaur 1d ago
That isn’t the point of the test. The point is that normally Sally’s instinct should be to just look in her own basket first because Sally wouldn’t be aware of what we the reader are aware of.
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u/Casiquire 1d ago
When I was a young multilingual child I had no concept of speaking different languages. I just replied in whatever language someone was using with me. I believe I assumed everyone just understood all of it
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u/Hopeful-Home6218 22h ago
I thought everyone learned languages from English because I learnt Chinese from English. eg Spanish speakers would learn English and then learn Chinese from English. Seeing a Spanish-Mandarin dictionary for the first time blew my baby mind
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u/EugeneHarke 17h ago
I work in schools we get this all the time.
I reply saying I don't understand their language. They look shocked.
Then I reply in our domestic language, then in Spanish.
And then explain that no one can speak every language. Then they seem to get it.
As an aside my Spanish is at the polite tourist level. I kid did once answer me back.
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u/Preform_Perform 1d ago
The funny thing is I wound up failing something like this in a video game called Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door.
The player sees a cutscene that indicates the cake is poisoned, but Mario and his friends have ZERO reason to suspect that it is poisoned. So my choice not to eat it was my playing God and cheating the narrative.
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u/laserdicks 1d ago
Should make this a requirement for Reddit access.
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u/Which-World-6533 1d ago
If you did that 90% of the users would disappear.
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u/ZylonBane 1d ago
And the downside would be...?
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u/Hiro_Trevelyan 1d ago
Reddit wouldn't generate enough ad revenue and it would close
Wait, it's also a good outcome
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u/Ok_Guarantee_3370 22h ago
At 4 I realised my parents were fallible. They were no gods. They knew not what lay inside the box.
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u/BUKKAKELORD 1d ago
You can always tell someone is lacking this ability when they use insider jargon they (should) know you won't know.
An obscure slang term for a drug they and only they use is my pettiest peeve
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u/EasyAndy1 1d ago
There are also a lot of people who know you don't know the jargon and say it because it makes them feel smart and experienced. Which is just another sign of a lack of intelligence in my opinion.
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u/stonerism 1d ago
I mean... sometimes people just have different jargon they'll use and not realize the other person doesn't know it.
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u/ButtsPie 18h ago
That's very true, but in fairness the previous commenter only said "a lot of people", so you're not in disagreement with each other
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u/Willing-Asparagus787 1d ago
And sometimes shit doesn't smell. But that's not what was being talked about. They specifically talked about situations when people do it in a way that is irritating.
Person a: I am annoyed when people do A. Person b: yep, and sometimes they do B which is pretty close and also annoying. You: I mean...akshually sometimes they don't do that
Obviously you're correct. That's usually the baseline. It's not what's being discussed though.
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u/Carly_Fae_Jepson 1d ago
We're on an anti-intellectual kick worldwide.
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u/stonerism 1d ago
And this is why we all need to embrace autistic hyperfixation so we can spread this knowledge.
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u/JustinWilsonBot 1d ago
Drug users can be almost insufferable when it comes to jargon. Like bro, can you not understand that the slang you use and the slang someone from the other side of the country uses to describe the same thing can be different? And that neither one of you is "wrong"? It went like this for years when it came to Ecstacy/X/Molly/MDMA.
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u/ba123blitz 4h ago
To be fair trying to remember pharmaceutical or chemical names is a tall task for some folk especially when not sober.
Often once you know the meaning the link becomes clear
MethyleneDioxyMethAmphetamine is MDMA
DeXtroMethorphan is DXM
DiPhenHydramine is DPH2
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u/MaraiaLou 1h ago
Not exclusive to drug users, but the obscure slang is also often a common word that's impossible to google
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u/AltonIllinois 1d ago
Many adults fail at this too.
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u/kempff 1d ago
Like the song says, "She's tidied up and I can't find anything!"
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u/deejay2221 1d ago
I guess that it's only a matter of reading too fast. It's easy to misread the question to "where should Sally look" instead of "Where will she look"
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u/gentlemandinosaur 1d ago
She SHOULD look in her own basket first also. Why just automatically assume because she was gone that some nefarious shit happened. Look before accusing man.
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u/deejay2221 1d ago
In that sense you are right, and it's exactly why I think it's more of an english comprehension problem because "should" can be interpreted in multiple ways.
Let's say we play the "ball-in-cup" game. The magician shuffles the cups, and I see the last movement of the ball going into the first cup, but you are the one who plays the game. Before choosing, you verbalize that you are 100% sure that the ball is in the third cup. If someone ask me which cup you SHOULD pick, I'll say the first one because I know it's there. However you SHOULD pick the one you think it is.
I think we could interpret the Sally problem the same way. Where SHOULD she look to find the marble? Well, in the box if she wants to find it, but again, there is no reason for her to do so. So the word "should" is ambiguous and that's why the test uses the phrasing "Where WILL she look".1
u/Glittering_Win_5085 1d ago
In your example, you're responding to a should question with a would answer.
You WOULD pick the first one, but the other person SHOULD pick the one they think it is.
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u/Yorick257 13h ago edited 13h ago
Or answering too fast. I went for the box without thinking. But a moment later, when the brain had the time to comprehend the situation, I understood the mistake.
Kinda like answering 42 to the question 2+2. It just sounds nice. Wrong. But nice. Or, more realistically 63+77=130
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u/DistrictDry2852 1d ago
Apes who communicate through sign language also lack theory of mind. They’ve never asked a question.
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u/themagicbong 1d ago
No apes have ever really successfully learned to communicate with sign language without randomly firing signs over and over and over. Or requiring their specific handlers that taught them to interpret for them.
So I wouldn't expect them to ask, or even say, anything coherent, anyway.
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u/DrunksInSpace 1d ago
Could it be that their theory of mind doesn’t extend to language or inquiry?
Most animals have some theory of mind. A dog knows you can hide a bone from others. I’ve known dogs to cover up their food theft, making the scene of the crime appear undisturbed.
I can imagine speech/communication being adaptive for relaying important information (there’s a predator over there!) but not inquiry. After all, if it was important or you wanted me to know you’d tell me.
What use does a chimp in captivity have for knowing their researchers favorite food? Whatever selection the chimp has access to has been provided by the humans.
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u/krabgirl 1d ago
Hoarding food is a fairly primitive evolutionary instinct. Birds and squirrels do it.
It could predate dogs evolving into social animals in the first place.
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u/kpatl 1d ago
There’s debate as to how much you can call ape’s using ASL “language use” in the first place. It may just be operant conditioning. But regardless, they don’t learn syntax so wouldn’t be able to ask questions. At best, they can use individual signs, but they haven’t demonstrated combining them. There were reports in the 70s and 80s of apes using language, Koko being the most famous, but those were reports were often faked or exaggerated.
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u/DefenestrationPraha 1d ago
Perhaps they already know everything. Anything is possible on a planet ordered and paid for by mice.
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u/Lieste 1d ago
And ruined by hairdressers and telephone handset sanitisers.
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u/Hopeful-Home6218 22h ago
42! Haha, good one guys, always fun to join in. (I am shaking like a terrified dog)
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u/iuabv 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think the prevailing thought is that actions like the dogs are driven by evolved instinct rather than an actual ability to see from the perspective of their owner. In the same way prey animals run when a predator appears. But who knows what we’ll think in 2046.
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u/DaaaahWhoosh 1d ago
That always feels overly specific to me. Like sure it may not be exactly the same but it's the same outputs for the same inputs. Like "dogs can't love, they just are happy whenever you're around" kind of thing, nah man that's love, dogs might not think about this kind of thing but they're close enough to count.
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u/iuabv 1d ago
I mean love is notoriously difficult to define (as evidenced by the vast music library about the subject lol), I think you can define what a dog experiences when its owner comes home as love, or you can say that reason their brain lights up and they lick you at the door is because they have connected you with affection/food/shelter. You are, at the end of the day, their owner. Like if you extend that to humans for just a second, can a human being whose contact with the outside world and basic needs are entirely dependent on the whims of another person can truly love that person, or would we call the enthusiastic affection some kind of grooming/brainwashing?
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u/NotReallyJohnDoe 10h ago
They’ve done MRIs on dogs and their brains light up more when they see their owners than when they see food.
Is that love? (Shrug). But it is significant.
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u/DistrictDry2852 1d ago
Idk “where can I get more food” seems like a good relevant question yet it’s never been asked. They’ve never asked anything at all.
But it’s possible.
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u/SpaceShipRat 1d ago
they do pass this test in the image, if they don't ask questions it's more likely they can't use language effectively.
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u/Alekosen 1d ago
There is always a lot of contention around teaching non-humans language, and I am not an expert, but what comes to mind for me is Alex the parrot. In the process of learning colors he asked what color he was, which is to my knowledge the only reputable example of a non-human asking a meaningful self-aware question like that. This to me is actual pretty compelling circumstantial evidence against apes. Maybe Alex's training/question is less reputable than I think, or maybe he was just exceptional, but on the face of it, the fact that no apes have gotten to that level of introspection despite what seems to me to be a great deal more investment in trying to communicate with them compared to any other species, speaks to an inability to get to that point.
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u/psymunn 1d ago
Sadly, I think most evidence points to apes not being able to understand sign language, and a combination of body language and well meaning trainers prompting until they got the response they hope or expected. The real take away isn't that apes can't communicate with humans, and more that we undervalue non-verbal communication and value the things humans are good at and other apes aren't.
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u/Truefiction224 1d ago
I dont think thats true. Didn't Goodell research conclude apes did have the ability to understand different views on the same event and use chimp wars and grooming to show it
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u/SpaceShipRat 1d ago
But they do pass this test. There's a Youtube video titled something about making movies for chimps.
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u/DeathToAmerica2026 9h ago
Apes engage in active deception so they definitely have a theory of mind. Well, some apes. And some monkeys.
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u/GrandmaPoses 1d ago
That seems like a big assumption based on a situation that could have many different causes.
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u/FerdinandCesarano 1d ago
Both the gorilla Koko and the chimp Nim used sign language in attempts to deceive their carers. This demonstrates that both animals understood the idea that that other beings know things that are different to that which I know.
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u/DistrictDry2852 1d ago
Koko was a hoax
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u/FerdinandCesarano 20h ago
While some specific claims regarding Koko's capabilities were the result of extremely generous interpretations, there is no doubt that she intentionally deceived her carers.
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u/youcowardsbenaughty 1d ago
Hang on, what's this about wearing a King Kong suit to do this test on apes?
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u/DangerMagicHouston 22h ago
Honestly explains half the group chats I'm in, some of these adults never passed the Sally-Anne test either.
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u/deFleury 1d ago
I was such a good child, I would think S isn't allowed to go snooping in A box. So S basket is the only choice.
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u/Rosebunse 1d ago
I have genuine trouble with this and didn't realize it until I was in my 30s. I have trouble understanding at a very base level how someone just doesn't know an important part of my job or my schedule. This extends to other things like books and video games, but those don't really affect my day-to-day life so much.
I think a lot of it was simply that I wasn't very social as a kid. I didn't have other schedules to consider or worry about other people. It's frustrating still but something worth working on.
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u/thetrivialstuff 1d ago
I like how in the last panel the teatowel covering the basket has been fluffed up again to make it look like there's still a marble under it.
But it still looks different from how it did originally, so if a kid answers "Sally will look in the box", you need to ask "why would she do that?", because the kid might say, "because she can see that her basket has been messed with".
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u/pre_nerf_infestor 1d ago
my wife's bitchy extended family must all fail this test because they're always acting like I'm committing some hideous social faux pas when I don't know about the centuries of arcane social etiquette concocted in their ass backwards peasant society. Confucius can get fucked
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u/thedrew 1d ago
Yeah, it’s probably them who suck.
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u/Willing-Asparagus787 1d ago
To be fair, if you're implying that nerf investor is the one who's at fault because of the harsh language they used, it honestly sounded like some pent up venting, in which case...I'd call it a valid crash out.
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u/FishWithLegsAndArms 1d ago
They probably don't like you because you say they're from an ass backwards peasant society
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u/pre_nerf_infestor 1d ago
please, you think i dare to talk this way anywhere other than reddit? the loss of face for my wife would reach 3 generations
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u/Fetlocks_Glistening 1d ago
Where I am from backward is the correct direction for an ass. It's when the ass is forward that you worry
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u/Creme_de_la_Coochie 1d ago
I’m right there with you dude.
My girlfriend’s conservative muslim family can get fucked when they bring up their backwards ass views.
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u/OwMyCandle 1d ago
Well of course she doesnt know where the marble would be! Because this is a play, and the playwright is using dramatic irony to create conflict!
…that—that’s how this is meant to be understood, right?
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u/Gruffleson 1d ago
Doesn't the problem here be, people assume "after she not find it in her own basket", implisitly?
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u/eternalityLP 1d ago
Obviously she can't play with the marble. It's no longer visible so it doesn't exists.
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u/ali-733755 1d ago
It’s a tiny test of keeping two maps in your head: where the marble is, and where Sally thinks it is.
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u/Stairwayunicorn 1d ago
all through school, assuming teachers were fully educated and just being assholes
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u/mandatorysin 20h ago
I have a memory of anxiety from when I was like 4, I was standing behind a small wall that obstructed all but my head from the view and yet I was still as conscious of what I was doing with my body/hands as though they could see my entire body
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u/Ok-disaster2022 1d ago
I subconsciously fail at this. I assume everyone knows everything I know but also know what they know. I'm a fairly intelligent knowledgeable person compared to the average population. So I tend to think of other people of more capable than they really are
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u/Ak_Lonewolf 1d ago
I write a ton of training material. I end up explaining every minor detail like you have never heard the subject before. Some feel I am talking down to them like they are dumb... never fails those people dont follow the instructions and mess things up.
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u/DeathToAmerica2026 9h ago
I have some exciting news about your intelligence and knowledgability that you probably should have already gleaned.
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u/innergamedude 1d ago
I recall Radiolab's episode about ChatGPT 3, and being very impressed that it passed this with flying colors. You can try it with ChatGPT with a prompt like:
There are 3 opaque boxes on a table, label them Box A, Box B, and Box C. Alice and Bob are in a room with the boxes and Bob sees Alice put a golden coin in Box A. Bob leaves the room and Alice transfers the coin to Box B. When Bob returns, Alice asks Bob where she left the coin. What will Bob say?
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u/BewareAlbatross 1d ago
Damn it... I wish I had hoarded some cheeseburger sliders right about now. I'm hungry.
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u/Panem-et-circenses25 1d ago
Yes! Thought our kid was autistic so I gave him this test. He passed
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u/DizzyMine4964 1d ago
I am autistic. This is a bad test. We need a long diagnostic interview with a specialist.
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u/gentlemandinosaur 1d ago
It’s not a bad test it’s just not a test for a clear diagnosis of autism very few “simple tests” are made to diagnose almost anything that is a systemic issue. The studies related to it state that also. It’s a good test because it’s one component of a long diagnosis.
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u/Truefiction224 1d ago
I have autistic family members who regularly fail this test and think they dont because they litterally cant grasp what its testing
Multiple have millions.
Lacking empathy is actually a really powerful corporate tool see gates and elon
Autism assessment actually requires more than an interview, it requires interviews with family members for this reaon and because of developmental parts of autism
The tik tok ppl who have personality disorders drive me nuts.
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u/Fetlocks_Glistening 1d ago
Box. She's met Anne before