What is it?
It is: 1) how you think about thinking and; 2) how you think about how others think.
Now let’s take a moment to digest this as a concept, because the reality is that most of us would take this ability for granted, unless you or someone you know really struggles with making/keeping friends or relating to others. Because theory of mind is made up of your own unique experiences, beliefs, emotional response and thoughts about all of this – no two people can have the same information to draw on and it’s the acknowledgement and realisation of this that is the crux of theory of mind.
Why is it important?
Theory of mind makes social situations easier to navigate. If you can guess or have some idea about what a person might be thinking or feeling it makes it easier to connect with them and forms the basis of empathy.
Theory of mind is something that is uniquely human and it is only when people start having difficulties with relationships that we may start to think that something might be wrong. It is important to bear in mind though that usually the person with a compromised theory of mind is the last person to be aware of it – because they lack the insight to understand and pinpoint what exactly is difficult about their relationships and more often than not, they think the trouble lies with the other person. So, they will genuinely think that they are always right and everyone else doesn’t have a clue! They will also struggle with knowing when to stop talking even when the other person isn’t interested and have no idea why you don’t play the game exactly how they do it – how can they? They have no concept that you could possibly think differently to them.
What can be done about it?
Explicit and sometimes exaggerated teaching of all the components of social skills is needed. Broken down this encompasses teaching a person about communication – both verbal and non-verbal, listening- how to paraphrase, discerning tone of voice, looking for cues – facial expressions, body language, eye contact and direction. Following this you would then move on to teaching emotional competence – recognition of emotions in self and then in others, guessing others emotions based on clues (e.g. tone of voice and facial expressions) learnt from the development of communication skills and then practicing guessing and asking others about how they think and feel and drawing comparisons or acknowledging that they are differences. This can lead to talking to the person about their special interests and who shares them and who doesn’t. Then using the skills learnt from emotional competence and communication – working out how you can tell this.
As adults we can also provide clues to all of this. As theory of mind is very much a “hidden” ability – talking out loud about how you’re thinking and feeling helps to demystify what is going on for you and can help your child know that you have a different perspective and why.