Remember as a kid how you're mom seemed to have the ability to read your mind? Turns out that she might have had just such a skill after all:
Although it may suggest something from the Psychic Friends Network, "mindreading" is a term used by some scientists to describe the complex yet taken-for-granted talent most people have for detecting the inner emotional states of others. Whenever we converse, our spoken dialogue is accompanied by a second, lightning-fast discourse of small gestures, vocal intonations, fleeting smiles, arched eyebrows, and other signals that help us understand one another.
Mindreading of this sort isn't the same thing as empathy, the self-conscious sensation of feeling someone else's pain. Nor is a good mindreader necessarily a "people person" -- we all know backslapping bon vivants who are all but illiterate when it comes to reading the subtleties of social interaction. That's what mindreading is about: building working hypotheses about what's going on in other people's heads, based on the most subtle of cues and clues.
Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen developed a test called "The Reading The Mind In The Eyes Test" -- that measures an individual's mindreading ability. The test requires subjects to discern subtle emotional states from looking at a series of photographs. While 'mind reading” skill levels vary, people with autism consistently fail the test.
Baron-Cohen claims that autism is not a fixed pathology but can exist as a matter of degree. Some people may be 'a little bit autistic” and exhibit lower signs of emotional reasoning.
How talented are you at mind reading? The test, in which you judge the emotional state based on looking at photographs of people's eye gestures, is available in three parts (Instructions and answers, Test (Part 1 and Part 2)). An average score is correctly identifying 30 out of the 36 answers.
(The methodology for the test can be found in the article, 'The 'Reading the mind in the eyes' test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger Syndrome or High-Functioning autism" S. Baron-Cohen, S. Wheelwright and J. Hill, (2001), Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42:241-252) More information can be found at the Autism Research Centre.
You can also take Baron-Cohen's online Autism Quotient test.
(Via: Arts and Letters Daily)
1
There's an excellent article on Aspergers Syndrome and Geeks in an older issue of wired. It can be found here:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html
It helps to explain why the truly geeky have such poor interpesonal skills.
-Jim.
2
I have a 13 year old non-verbal autistic son. It's true, that if the ability to be empathetic, or mind read other people comes through the ability to read the emotions or thoughts behind the eyes, then autistic people would have trouble with that. Making eye contact is a difficult thing for them to do. However, the ability to read someone elses emotions, does not have to be specific to being able to "read" the eyes. My son knows, for instance and reacts to other people's emotions or body expression, and even facial expressions and reacts accordingly. I would love information about a test based on something other than reading eyes, if anyone knows of anything.
Thanks
posted on 02.24.2004 2:37 PM