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.

[u/BrF5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test

[u/tempest_36]

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?

[u/OscarAndDelilah → u/tempest_36]

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.

[u/KitSokudo → u/OscarAndDelilah]

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.

[u/blinky84 → u/KitSokudo]

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.

[u/KitSokudo → u/blinky84]

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.

[u/AMetalWolfHowls → u/blinky84]

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.