This describes a typical autistic person’s experience of Theory of Mind. Autism varies widely and if you are autistic and reading this it may not match your experience.

Note: I do not experience this and have only information gleaned from LLMs. In fact this may not match anyone’s experience, but this model does fit with how I have read people think the ToM mechanism behind autism works.

See also: NT Experience and My Experience.

• Able to receive signal from nonverbal cues
  • e.g. the social signal
  • Very aware that others have hidden thoughts, sometimes hyper-aware
  • The signal may be noisy, unfiltered, has a connection issue or might be something else – in any event it doesn’t engage the automatic simulation hardware in the brain
    • See this book where the author experiences a change in their ability
• Manual processing, manual simulation
  • Called Theory-theory
  • People must manually process social signals through propositional logic
    • Behavior X implies intent Y
  • Search for meaning, intention, subtext
  • Anxiety around misinterpretation
  • Conflicting thoughts about what others think
  • High effort
    • This can lead to meltdowns, social fatigue, or being overwhelmed
  • Social lag
    • The effort and processing takes time and reactions may lag
• Mechanism
  • Social Salience works but noisy
  • Manual processing of signals
  • High effort, high lag