I work for some studies with 9-10 years old children and for another project with old people. In both cases the Strange Stories (White et al., 2009) task has been very useful in detecting individual differences in advanced ToM skills. There are moreover some interesting tasks developed by Apperly (i.e.,Apperly et al., 2011) using reactions times in ToM cognitive tasks with adults. I suggest you as well his book (Apperly, 2011) for a quite interesting background for cognitive ToM advanced skills. Hope my answer helps. best wishes.

Ref:

Apperly, I. A. (2011). Mindreaders: The cognitive basis of 'theory of mind'. New York, NY, USA: Psychology Press.

Apperly,I.A., Warren, F., Andrews, B.J., Grant, J. & Todd, S. (2011). Developmental continuity in theory of mind: Speed and accuracy of belief-desire reasoning in children and adults. Child Development. 82(5), 1691-703.

White, S., Hill, E., Happé, F. G. E., & Frith, U. (2009). Revisiting the Strange Stories:

Revealing mentalising impairments in Autism. Child Development, 80, 1097-1117.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01319.x

I work for some studies with 9-10 years old children and for another project with old people. In both cases the Strange Stories (White et al., 2009) task has been very useful in detecting individual differences in advanced ToM skills. There are moreover some interesting tasks developed by Apperly (i.e.,Apperly et al., 2011) using reactions times in ToM cognitive tasks with adults. I suggest you as well his book (Apperly, 2011) for a quite interesting background for cognitive ToM advanced skills. Hope my answer helps. best wishes.

Ref:

Apperly, I. A. (2011). Mindreaders: The cognitive basis of 'theory of mind'. New York, NY, USA: Psychology Press.

Apperly,I.A., Warren, F., Andrews, B.J., Grant, J. & Todd, S. (2011). Developmental continuity in theory of mind: Speed and accuracy of belief-desire reasoning in children and adults. Child Development. 82(5), 1691-703.

White, S., Hill, E., Happé, F. G. E., & Frith, U. (2009). Revisiting the Strange Stories:

Revealing mentalising impairments in Autism. Child Development, 80, 1097-1117.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01319.x

Thanks for your feedback, Federica! I have used the Strange Stories task and I like it. I have also read research by Apperly and colleagues, and while I haven't used his visual perspective-taking tasks, they seem to be intriguing measures. Thinking about reaction time as an individual difference measure is also interesting. Thank you!

Have you used the faux pas task (your kiddos might have been too young) or what my old lab used to call Tricky Triangles (movies of animated geometric shapes representing complex social emotions, by Castelli et al, 2000)? I have also seen researchers use the comic strip task or cartoons task, but I do not know how sensitive these measures are in assessing ToM in typically-developing populations.

In addition, I am also posting a reply from Meredith R. Wilkinson, who messaged me, as well as my reply to her.

Dear Kathryn ,

I have seen you message regarding the use of advanced theory of mind tests. During my PhD I examined the theory theory versus simulation theory debate (sometimes referred to as theory of mind) to examine mental state reasoning. I tested adult participants and made use of counterfactual vignettes pertaining to mental states. I think that asking participants to reason about scenarios that tap into various dimensions of theory of mind - indeed maybe the distinction between different aspects such as belief reasoning versus desire reasoning can be very useful.

I hope you find this helpful.

Best wishes,

Meredith

Kathryn F Jankowski 1 day ago

Thanks for your reply!

I have previously used the Strange Stories task and the Faux Pas task as a means to tap into some more complex ToM demands, and it sounds like these may be similar to your suggestion. Do you have any specific recommendations of tasks you have used and liked?

Unfortunately, it seems that many ToM tasks are catered to younger populations or more simple ToM abilities, and thus, they may be too easy for typically-developing adults (and sometimes even adolescents). In addition, these more complex tasks may be confounded by other variables, such as high working memory demands.

In general, many ToM tasks can still be used with typically-developing adults in fMRI research, because they tap the same ToM demands. However, if you want to investigate differences in ToM abilities on a behavioral level, most participants would reach ceiling.

I have seen some researchers suggest new ways of studying ToM in older or more cognitively-advanced populations, such as using the Director's Task, other tests of physical perspective-taking, and recently, sections of modern literature to evaluate the abilities to attribute mental states.

We are currently using the director task to examine perspective-taking in adults - it is a nice task with lots of things you can manipulate. We tend to use this task with eye-tracking though (in-line with other visual world paradigms) so we are not limited by just having reaction time responses and error rates - which usually tell more about end processes rather that unfolding decision ToM / perspective taking processes. Boaz Keysar (who developed the director task) has a nice web page has plenty of papers relating to his work using this task ( http://psychology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/bkeysar.shtml ) - most linked to pdfs.

We also use another avatar task developed by Dana Samson and Ian Apperly et al. which also examines visual perspective-taking. In this task the participant to respond to to a number of disks shown on a wall based on their own perspective or the avatars perspective - details are shown in the paper referenced below. This is a very nice task and we get very robust results from using this with adults.

Hope this helps.

Samson, D., Apperly, I. A., Braithwaite, J. J., Andrews, B. J., & Bodley Scott, S. E. (2010). Seeing it their way: Evidence for rapid and involuntary computation of what other people see. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36(5), 1255–1266. doi:10.1037/a0018729

Dear Kathryn,

sorry for the delay in my answer. Actually some people in my research group used successfully the Faux Pas Test as well. We've just started to use the Tricky Triangles. It's a really interesting measure, children like it, but probably ToM works a bit differently in order to pass this test.

I'm sorry but I don't know the Comic strip task or the Cartoons task. However, the Silent Film task (Devine & Hughes, 2013) seems to detect quite well individual differences in ToM advanced skills.

All the best,

Federica

Ref:

Devine, R. T., & Hughes, C. (2013). Silent Films and Strange Stories: Theory of mind, gender and social experiences in middle childhood. Child Development, 84, 989-1003. doi:10.1111/cdev.12017

Thanks Federica! How cool! A film version of the Strange Stories task! I will definitely check it out!

Relatedly, I have never used the Reading the Mind in the Films task or the Reading the Mind in the Voice task (similar to the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task) although I would like to. I wish there was an American version!

Thanks for your suggestions, Dr Cane! While I have primarily used more social or cognitive perspective-taking tasks, I am familiar with the director's task and visual perspective-taking tasks, and I think that your approach of looking at the process of perspective-taking will be very informative. I agree that it is important to investigate multiple aspects of perspective-taking. Thank you!

Have you checked if there is anything similar on the site of Prof. Baron-Cohen? There are a lot of instruments there, sometimes vaidated in a lot of languages/populations

Hi Federica. Yes, I have! The ARC website is great and offers free versions of their measures, including the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task and Faux Pas Task (both of which I have used).

*As a note, when i said American versions, I meant in comparison to the British versions. Some of the dialogue might be a little difficult to understand for American English speakers.

Hi Kathryn, I was happy to come across this question & answer thread as I am investigating ToM in non-clinical adult populations. Good ToM measures are hard to come by! So I was wondering, did you find any other useful measures in addition to the ones mentioned here which you can recommend? Best wishes, Kate

Hi Kate, nice to meet a fellow ToM researcher!

I ended up including the Strange Stories Task and RMET in my battery, as well as the IRI and BES (for cognitive empathy). I'd love to have included a task like the Reading the Mind in the Voice or Films, but they only had British versions and I thought it would be challenging for my kids to follow them.

However, a big part of my study involved making my own adolescent dynamic movie stimuli to assess self-conscious emotion understanding (which I used to analyze behavioral ratings and associated MRI brain activity). I am happy to discuss the stimuli set with you, although it likely will not be developmentally-appropriate for nonclinical adults, especially if you are doing behavioral analyses and not MRI.

Good luck, and please let me know what you end up using!