After noon. You had breakfast while leisurely
reading the Sunday Enquirer. Carol is making meatloaf from scratch using
Grandma Schick's and Grandma Cook's secret recipe. This brings you up to
'ghosts'. Human spirits of the family. Old friends since childhood. Elizabeth
Mae Freeman, born on a farm 13 April 1889 in Delaware County near Lewis Center.
Grace Josephine Flook, born 27 March 1890 on a farm in Franklin County. They
were friends growing up near the village of Westerville. Both married, Mae married
Henri H. Schick who worked as a house painter and for the Schick Brothers Brick
Works in Westerville and Grace married Leonard Cook who was a press setter for
the Columbus Dispatch. They lived in Westerville. The Schick's lived on East
College near Vine Street school and the railroad station to and from Columbus. Cook's
lived on West Main across the street from Otterbein's campus. Both families
were staunch Democrats in a village of mostly Republicans. Mae and Grace shared
secret family recipes only with each other. You had your first taste of this bit
of information when you had your first dinner at Jean and Scotch's home in
Alexandra, Virginia. Carol's mother made roast beef which you detested when
made by your mother, but this was Grandma Cook's recipe which Grandma Schick
always used and swore that was only in the Freeman family. - Amorella
1259 hours. Wow. What a surprise that was. I asked rather uncomfortably,
"How do you have Grandma Schick's secret recipe?" Carol's mother told
me the story and a secret light lit up in my heart saying, "This is a good
sign." My heart has been comfortable with it ever since. Real people, real
spirits still sit nearby in my heart, the closest thing to a location of ghosts
that I will ever need. Wow.- rho
Post.
- Amorella
The above caused you to
rethink about 'object relations theory' in terms to how you have personalized
particular 'ghosts' through your life. - Amorella
1330 hours. I don't ever remember reading about this concept before but
it may have merits from my perspective.
1343
hours. I read through Wikipedia's information on object relations theory but it
did not hold my interest (I was looking for a validation of the term
'splitting' as I gather it from self-experience. I did find 'Theory of Mind' in
the research and it fits better with my intuitive sense of 'the inner
development of personalized ghosts'.
**
**
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Theory of
mind (often abbreviated ToM)
is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires,
pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others
have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from
one's own. Deficits can occur in people with autism spectrum disorders,
schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, concaine addiction,
and brain damage suffered from alcohol's neurotoxicity. Although philosophical approaches to this
exist, the theory of mind as such is distinct from the philosophy of the mind.
Definition
Theory
of mind is a theory insofar
as the mind is the only thing being directly observed. The presumption that
others have a mind is termed a theory of mind because each human can only
intuit the existence of their own mind through introspection, and no one has
direct access to the mind of another. It is typically assumed that others have
minds analogous to one's own, and this assumption is based on the reciprocal,
social interaction, as observed in joint attention, the functional use of
language, and the understanding
of others' emotions and actions. Having
theory of mind allows one to attribute thoughts, desires, and intentions to
others, to predict or explain their actions, and to posit their intentions. As
originally defined, it enables one to understand that mental states can be the
cause of—and thus be used to explain and predict—the behavior of others. Being able to attribute mental states
to others and understanding them as causes of behavior implies, in part, that
one must be able to conceive of the mind as a "generator of
representations". If a person does not have a complete theory of mind it
may be a sign of cognitive or developmental impairment.
Theory
of mind appears to be an innate potential ability in primates including humans,
that requires social and other experience over many years for its full
development. Different people may develop more, or less, effective theory of
mind. Empathy is a related
concept, meaning the recognition and understanding of the states of mind of
others, including their beliefs, desires and particularly emotions. This is
often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's
shoes". Recent neuro-ethological studies of animal behaviour suggest that
even rodents may exhibit ethical or empathetic abilities.Neo-Piagetian theories
of cognitive development maintain that theory of mind is a byproduct of a
broader hypercognitiveability of the human mind to register, monitor, and
represent its own functioning.
Research
on theory of mind, in humans and animals, adults and children, normally and
atypically developing, has grown rapidly in the 35 years since Permack and Guy Woodruff's paper, "Does
the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?". The emerging field of social
neuroscience has also begun to
address this debate, by imaging the brains of humans while they perform tasks
demanding the understanding of an intention, belief or other mental state in
others.
An
alternative account of Theory of Mind is given within operant psychology and
provides significant empirical evidence for
a functional account of both perspective-taking and empathy. The most developed
operant approach is founded on research on derived relational responding and is
subsumed within what is called "relational frame theory". According
to this view, empathy and perspective-taking comprise a complex set of derived
relational abilities based on learning to discriminate and respond verbally to
ever more complex relations between self, others, place, and time, and through
established relations.
Philosophical and
psychological roots
Contemporary
discussions of ToM have their roots in philosophical debate—most broadly, from
the time of Descartes' Second
Meditation, which set the groundwork for considering the science of the
mind. Most prominent recently are two contrasting approaches in the
philosophical literature, to theory of mind: theory-theory and simulation
theory. The theory-theorist imagines a veritable theory—"folk
psychology"—used to reason about others' minds. The theory is developed
automatically and innately, though instantiated through social interactions. It is also closely related to person
perception and attribution theory from
social psychology.
The
intuitive assumption that others are minded is an apparent tendency we all
share. We anthropomorphize non-human
animals, inanimate objects, and even natural phenomena. Daniel Dennett referred to this tendency as taking an
"intentional stance" toward
things: we assume they have intentions, to help predict future behavior. However,
there is an important distinction between taking an "intentional
stance" toward something and entering a "shared world" with it.
The intentional stance is a detached and functional theory we resort to during
interpersonal interactions. A shared world is directly perceived and its
existence structures reality itself for the perceiver. It is not just
automatically applied to perception; it in many ways constitutes perception.
The
philosophical roots of the relational frame theory (RFT) account of ToM arise
from contextual psychology and refer to the study of organisms (both human and
non-human) interacting in and with a historical and current situational
context. It is an approach based on contextualism, a philosophy in which any
event is interpreted as an ongoing act inseparable from its current and
historical context and in which a radically functional approach to truth and
meaning is adopted. As a variant of contextualism, RFT focuses on the
construction of practical, scientific knowledge. This scientific form of
contextual psychology is virtually synonymous with the philosophy of operant
psychology.
Development
The
study of which animals are capable of attributing knowledge and mental states
to others, as well as the development of this ability in human ontogeny and
phylogeny, has identified several behavioral precursors to theory of mind.
Understanding attention, understanding of others' intentions, and imitative
experience with other people are hallmarks of a theory of mind that may be
observed early in the development of what later becomes a full-fledged theory.
In studies with non-human animals and pre-verbal humans, in particular,
researchers look to these behaviors preferentially in making inferences about
mind.
Simon Baron-Cohen identified
the infant's understanding of attention in others, a social skill found by 7 to
9 months of age, as a "critical precursor" to the development of
theory of mind. Understanding attention involves understanding that seeing can
be directed selectively as attention, that the looker assesses the seen object
as "of interest", and that seeing can induce beliefs. Attention can
be directed and shared by the act of pointing, a joint attention behavior that
requires taking into account another person's mental state, particularly
whether the person notices an object or finds it of interest. Baron-Cohen speculates that the
inclination to spontaneously reference an object in the world as of interest
("proto-declarative pointing") and to likewise appreciate the
directed attention and interests of another may be the underlying motive behind
all human communication.
Understanding
of others' intentions is another critical precursor to understanding other minds
because intentionality, or "aboutness", is a fundamental feature of
mental states and events. The "intentional stance" has been defined
by Daniel Dennett as an
understanding that others' actions are goal-directed and arise from particular
beliefs or desires. Both 2- and 3-year-old children could discriminate when an
experimenter intentionally vs. accidentally marked a box with stickers as
baited. Even earlier in ontogeny, Andrew N. Meltzoff found that 18-month-old
infants could perform target manipulations that adult experimenters attempted
and failed, suggesting the infants could represent the object-manipulating
behavior of adults as involving goals and intentions. While attribution of
intention (the box-marking) and knowledge (false-belief tasks) is investigated
in young humans and nonhuman animals to detect precursors to a theory of mind,
Gagliardi et al. have pointed out that even adult humans do not always act in a
way consistent with an attributional perspective. In the experiment, adult human subjects
made choices about baited containers when guided by confederates who could not
see (and therefore, not know) which container was baited.
Recent
research in developmental psychology suggests that the infant's ability to
imitate others lies at the origins of both theory of mind and other
social-cognitive achievements like perspective-taking and empathy. According to
Meltzoff, the infant's innate understanding that others are "like me"
allows it to recognize the equivalence between the physical and mental states
apparent in others and those felt by the self. For example, the infant uses his
own experiences, orienting his head/eyes toward an object of interest to
understand the movements of others who turn toward an object, that is, that
they will generally attend to objects of interest or significance. Some
researchers in comparative disciplines have hesitated to put a too-ponderous
weight on imitation as a critical precursor to advanced human social-cognitive
skills like mentalizing and empathizing, especially if true imitation is no
longer employed by adults. A test of imitation by Alexandra Horowitz found that adult subjects imitated an
experimenter demonstrating a novel task far less closely than children did.
Horowitz points out that the precise psychological state underlying imitation
is unclear and cannot, by itself, be used to draw conclusions about the mental
states of humans.
Language
There
is evidence to believe that the development of theory of mind is closely
intertwined with language development in humans. One meta-analysis showed a
moderate to strong correlation (r =
0.43) between performance on theory of mind and language tasks. One might argue that this relationship
is due solely to the fact that both language and theory of mind seem to begin to
develop substantially around the same time in children (between ages 2–5).
However, many other abilities develop during this same time period as well, and
do not produce such high correlations with one another nor with theory of mind.
There must be something else going on to explain the relationship between
theory of mind and language.
Carol
A. Miller posed a few possible explanations for this relationship. One idea was
that the extent of verbal communication and conversation involving children in
a family could explain theory of mind development. The belief is that this type
of language exposure could help introduce a child to the different mental
states and perspectives of others. This has been suggested empirically by
findings indicating that participation in family discussion predict scores on
theory of mind tasks as well as findings showing that deaf children who have
hearing parents and may not be able to communicate with their parents much
during early years of development tend to score lower on theory of mind tasks.
Another
explanation of the relationship between language and theory of mind development
has to do with a child's understanding of mental state words such as "think"
and "believe". Since a mental state is not something that one
can observe from behavior, children must learn the meanings of words denoting
mental states from verbal explanations alone, requiring knowledge of the
syntactic rules, semantic systems, and pragmatics of a language. Studies have
shown that understanding of these mental state words predicts theory of mind in
four-year-olds.
Lastly,
a third hypothesis is that the ability to distinguish a whole sentence
("Jimmy thinks the world is flat") from its embedded complement
("the world is flat") and understand that one can be true while the
other can be false is related to theory of mind development. Recognizing these
sentential complements as being independent of one another is a relatively
complex syntactic skill and has been shown to be related to increased scores on
theory of mind tasks in children.
Empirical
investigation
Whether
children younger than 3 or 4 years old may have any theory of mind is a topic
of debate among researchers. It is a challenging question, due to the
difficulty of assessing what pre-linguistic children understand about others
and the world. Tasks used in research into the development of ToM must take
into account the umwelt —(the
German word 'Umwelt' means
"environment" or "surrounding world")—of the pre-verbal
child.
False-belief task
One
of the most important milestones in theory of mind development is gaining the
ability to attribute false
belief: that is, to recognize that others can have beliefs about the world
that are diverging. To do this, it is suggested, one must understand how
knowledge is formed, that people's beliefs are based on their knowledge, that
mental states can differ from reality, and that people's behavior can be
predicted by their mental states. Numerous versions of the false-belief task
have been developed, based on the initial task done by Wimmer and Perner
(1983).
In
the most common version of the false-belief task (often called the
"'Sally-Anne' test" or
"'Sally-Anne' task"), children are told or shown a story involving
two characters. For example, the child is shown two dolls, Sally and Anne, who
have a basket and a box, respectively. Sally also has a marble, which she
places into her basket, and then leaves the room. While she is out of the room,
Anne takes the marble from the basket and puts it into the box. Sally returns,
and the child is then asked where Sally will look for the marble. The child
passes the task if she answers that Sally will look in the basket, where Sally
put the marble; the child fails the task if she answers that Sally will look in
the box, where the child knows the marble is hidden, even though Sally cannot
know this, since she did not see it hidden there. To pass the task, the child
must be able to understand that another's mental representation of the
situation is different from their own, and the child must be able to predict
behavior based on that understanding.
Another example is when a boy leaves chocolate on a shelf and then leaves the
room. His mother puts it in the fridge. To pass the task, the child must
understand that the boy, upon returning, holds the false belief that his
chocolate is still on the shelf.
The
results of research using false-belief tasks have been fairly consistent: most
normally developing children are able to pass the tasks from around age four. Notably, while most children,
including those with Down syndrome, are able to pass this test, in one study,
80% of children diagnosed with autism
were unable to do so.
Also
adults can experience problems with false beliefs. For instance, when they show
hindsight bias, defined as: "the inclination to see events that have
already happened as being more predictable than they were before they took
place." In an experiment by
Fischhoff in 1975, adult subjects who were asked for an independent assessment
were unable to disregard information on actual outcome. Also in experiments
with complicated situations, when assessing others' thinking, adults can be
unable to disregard certain information that they have been given.
Unexpected contents
Other
tasks have been developed to try to solve the problems inherent in the
false-belief task. In the "Unexpected contents", or
"Smarties" task, experimenters ask children what they believe to be
the contents of a box that looks as though it holds a candy called
"Smarties". After the child guesses (usually) "Smarties",
it is shown that the box in fact contained pencils. The experimenter then
re-closes the box and asks the child what she thinks another person, who has
not been shown the true contents of the box, will think is inside. The child
passes the task if he/she responds that another person will think that
"Smarties" exist in the box, but fails the task if she responds that
another person will think that the box contains pencils. Gopnik & Astington
(1988) found that children pass this test at age four or five years.
Other tasks
The
"false-photograph" task is
another task that serves as a measure of theory of mind development. In this
task, children must reason about what is represented in a photograph that
differs from the current state of affairs. Within the false-photograph task,
either a location or identity change exists. In
the location-change task, the examiner puts an object in one location (e.g.,
chocolate in an open green cupboard), whereupon the child takes a Polaroid
photograph of the scene. While the photograph is developing, the examiner moves
the object to a different location (e.g., a blue cupboard), allowing the
child to view the examiner's action. The examiner asks the child two control
questions: "When we first took the picture, where was the object?"
and "Where is the object now?". The subject is also asked a
"false-photograph" question: "Where is the object in the
picture?" The child passes the task if he/she correctly identifies the
location of the object in the picture and the actual location of the object at
the time of the question. However, the last question might be misinterpreted
as: "Where in this room is the object that the picture depicts?" and
therefore some examiners use an alternative phrasing.
To
make it easier for animals, young children, and individuals with classical
(Kanner-type) autism to understand and perform theory of mind tasks,
researchers have developed tests in which verbal communication is
de-emphasized: some whose administration does not involve verbal communication
on the part of the examiner, some whose successful completion does not require
verbal communication on the part of the subject, and some that meet both of the
foregoing standards. One category of tasks uses a preferential looking
paradigm, with looking time as the dependent variable. For instance,
9-month-old infants prefer looking at behaviors performed by a human hand over
those made by an inanimate hand-like object. Other paradigms look at rates of
imitative behavior, the ability to replicate and complete unfinished
goal-directed acts, and rates of
pretend play.
Early precursors
Recent
research on the early precursors of theory of mind has looked at innovative
ways at capturing preverbal infants' understanding of other people's mental
states, including perception and beliefs. Using a variety of experimental
procedures, studies have shown that infants in their second year of life have
an implicit understanding of what other people seeand what they know. A popular paradigm used to study
infants' theory of mind is the violation of expectation procedure, which
predicates on infants' tendency to look longer at unexpected and surprising
events compared to familiar and expected events. Therefore, their looking-times
measures would give researchers an indication of what infants might be
inferring, or their implicit understanding of events. One recent study using
this paradigm found that 16-month-olds tend to attribute beliefs to a person
whose visual perception was previously witnessed as being "reliable",
compared to someone whose visual perception was "unreliable".
Specifically, 16-month-olds were trained to expect a person's excited
vocalization and gaze into a container to be associated with finding a toy in
the reliable-looker condition or an absence of a toy in the unreliable-looker
condition. Following this training phase, infants witnessed, in an
object-search task, the same persons either searching for a toy in the correct
or incorrect location after they both witnessed the location of where the toy was
hidden. Infants who experienced the reliable looker were surprised and
therefore looked longer when the person searched for the toy in the incorrect
location compared to the correct location. In contrast, the looking time for
infants who experienced the unreliable looker did not differ for either search
locations. These findings suggest that 16-month-old infants can differentially
attribute beliefs about a toy's location based on the person's prior record of
visual perception.
Deficits
The
theory of mind (ToM) impairment describes a difficulty someone would have with
perspective-taking. This is also sometimes referred to as mind-blindness. This means
that individuals with a ToM impairment would have a difficult time seeing
phenomena from any other perspective than their own. Individuals who experience
a theory of mind deficit have difficulty determining the intentions of others,
lack understanding of how their behavior affects others, and have a difficult
time with social reciprocity. ToM
deficits have been observed in people with autism spectrum disorders, people
with schizophrenia, people with
nonverbal learning disorder, people with attention deficit disorder, persons
under the influence of alcohol and narcotics, sleep-deprived persons, and
persons who are experiencing severe emotional or physical pain.
Autism
In
1985 Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan M. Leslie and Uta Frith suggested that children with autism do not employ Theory of Mind and suggested that autistic children
have particular difficulties with tasks requiring the child to understand
another person's beliefs. These difficulties persist when children are matched
for verbal skills and have been
taken as a key feature of autism.
Many
individuals classified as autistic have severe difficulty assigning mental
states to others, and they seem to lack theory of mind capabilities. Researchers
who study the relationship between autism and theory of mind attempt to explain
the connection in a variety of ways. One account assumes that theory of mind
plays a role in the attribution of mental states to others and in childhood
pretend play. According to
Leslie, theory of mind is the
capacity to mentally represent thoughts, beliefs, and desires, regardless of
whether or not the circumstances involved are real. This might explain why some
autistic individuals show extreme deficits in both theory of mind and pretend
play. However, Hobson proposes a social-affective justification, which suggests that with an autistic
person, deficits in theory of mind result from a distortion in understanding
and responding to emotions. He suggests that typically developing human beings,
unlike autistic individuals, are born with a set of skills (such as social
referencing ability) that later lets them comprehend and react to other people's
feelings. Other scholars emphasize that autism involves a specific
developmental delay, so that autistic children vary in their deficiencies,
because they experience difficulty in different stages of growth. Very early
setbacks can alter proper advancement of joint-attention behaviors, which may
lead to a failure to form a full theory of mind.
It
has been speculated that ToM exists on a continuum as opposed to the traditional view of
a discrete presence or absence. While some research has suggested that some
autistic populations are unable to attribute mental states to others recent
evidence points to the possibility of coping mechanisms that facilitate a
spectrum of mindful behavior. Tine
et al. suggest that autistic children score substantially lower on measures of
social theory of mind in comparison to children diagnosed with Asperger
syndrome.
Schizophrenia
Individuals
with the diagnosis of schizophrenia can
show deficits in theory of mind. Mirjam Sprong and colleagues investigated the
impairment by examining 29 different studies, with a total of over 1500
participants. This meta-analysis
showed
significant and stable deficit of theory of mind in. people with schizophrenia.
They performed poorly on false-belief tasks, which test the ability to
understand that others can hold false beliefs about events in the world, and
also on intention-inference tasks, which assess the ability to infer a
character's intention from reading a short story. Schizophrenia patients with
negative symptoms, such as lack of emotion, motivation, or speech, have the
most impairment in theory of mind and are unable to represent the mental states
of themselves and of others. Paranoid schizophrenic patients also perform
poorly because they have difficulty accurately interpreting others' intentions.
The meta-analysis additionally showed that IQ, gender, and age of the
participants does not significantly affect the performance of theory of mind
tasks.
Current
research suggests that impairment in theory of mind negatively affects clinical
insight, the patient's awareness of their mental illness. Insight requires
theory of mind—a patient must be able to adopt a third-person perspective and
see the self as others do. A
patient with good insight would be able to accurately self-represent, by
comparing oneself with others and by viewing oneself from the perspective of
others. Insight allows a patient
to recognize and react appropriately to his symptoms; however, a patient who
lacks insight would not realize that he has a mental illness, because of his
inability to accurately self-represent. Therapies that teach patients
perspective-taking and self-reflection skills can improve abilities in reading
social cues and taking the perspective of another person.
The
majority of the current literature supports the argument that the theory of
mind deficit is a stable trait-characteristic rather than a
state-characteristic of schizophrenia. The
meta-analysis conducted by Sprong et al. showed that patients in remission
still had impairment in theory of mind. The results indicate that the deficit
is not merely a consequence of the active phase of schizophrenia.
Schizophrenic
patients' deficit in theory of mind impairs their daily interactions with
others. An example of a disrupted interaction is one between a schizophrenic
parent and a child. Theory of mind is particularly important for parents, who
must understand the thoughts and behaviors of their children and react
accordingly. Dysfunctional parenting is associated with deficits in the
first-order theory of mind, the ability to understand another person's
thoughts, and the second-order theory of mind, the ability to infer what one
person thinks about another person's thoughts. Compared with healthy mothers,
mothers with schizophrenia are found to be more remote, quiet, self-absorbed,
insensitive, unresponsive, and to have fewer satisfying interactions with their
children. They also tend to misinterpret their children's emotional cues, and
often misunderstand neutral faces as negative. Activities such as role-playing
and individual or group-based sessions are effective interventions that help
the parents improve on perspective-taking and theory of mind Although there is a strong association
between theory of mind deficit and parental role dysfunction, future studies
could strengthen the relationship by possibly establishing a causal role of
theory of mind on parenting abilities.
Alcohol use disorders
Impairments
in theory of mind, as well as other social-cognitive deficits are commonly
found in people suffering from alcoholism, due to the neurotoxic effects of
alcohol on the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex.
Depression and dysphoria
Individuals
in a current major depressive episode, a disorder characterized by social
impairment, show deficits in theory of mind decoding. Theory of mind decoding
is the ability to use information available in the immediate environment (e.g.,
facial expression, tone of voice, body posture) to accurately label the mental
states of others. The opposite pattern, enhanced theory of mind, is observed in
individuals vulnerable to depression, including those individuals with past
MDD, dysphoric individuals and individuals with a maternal
history of MDD.
Specific language impairment
Children
diagnosed with specific language impairment (SLI)
exhibit much lower scores on reading and writing sections of standardized
tests, yet have a normal nonverbal IQ. These language deficits can be any
specific deficits in lexical semantics, syntax, or pragmatics, or a combination
of multiple problems. They often exhibit poorer social skills than normally
developing children, and seem to have problems decoding beliefs in others. A
recent meta-analysis confirmed that children with SLI have substantially lower
scores on Theory of Mind tasks compared to typically developing children. This
strengthens the claim that language development is related to Theory of Mind.
Brain mechanisms
In typically developing humans
Research
on theory of mind in autism led to the view that mentalizing abilities are sub-served
by dedicated mechanisms that can -in some cases- be impaired while general
cognitive function remains largely intact.
Neuroimaging research
has supported this view, demonstrating specific brain regions consistently
engaged during theory of mind tasks. PET research on theory of mind, using
verbal and pictorial story comprehension tasks, has identified a set of brain
regions including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and area around
posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS),
and sometimes precuneus and amygdala/temporopolar cortex. Subsequently, research on the neural
basis of theory of mind has diversified, with separate lines of research
focused on the understanding of beliefs, intentions, and more complex
properties of minds such as psychological traits.
Studies
from Rebecca Saxe's lab at MIT, using a false-belief versus false-photograph
task contrast aimed at isolating the mentalizing component of the false-belief
task, have very consistently found activation in mPFC, precuneus, and
temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), right-lateralized. In particular, it has been proposed
that the right TPJ (rTPJ) is selectively involved in representing the beliefs of others.
However, some debate exists, as some scientists have noted that the same rTPJ
region has been consistently activated during spatial reorienting of visual
attention; Jean Decety from
the University of Chicago and Jason Mitchell from Harvard have thus proposed
that the rTPJ sub-serves a more general function involved in both false-belief
understanding and attentional reorienting, rather than a mechanism specialized
for social cognition. However, it is possible that the observation of
overlapping regions for representing beliefs and attentional reorienting may
simply be due to adjacent, but distinct, neuronal populations that code for
each. The resolution of typical fMRI studies may not be good enough to show
that distinct/adjacent neuronal populations code for each of these processes.
In a study following Decety and Mitchell, Saxe and colleagues used
higher-resolution fMRI and showed that the peak of activation for attentional
reorienting is approximately 6-10mm above the peak for representing beliefs.
Further corroborating that differing populations of neurons may code for each
process, they found no similarity in the patterning of fMRI response across
space.
Functional
imaging has also been used to study the detection of mental state information
in Heider-Simmel-esque animations of moving geometric shapes, which typical
humans automatically perceive as social interactions laden with intention and
emotion. Three studies found remarkably similar patterns of activation during
the perception of such animations versus a random or deterministic motion
control: mPFC, pSTS, fusiform face area
(FFA), and amygdala were selectively engaged during the ToM condition. Another
study presented subjects with an animation of two dots moving with a
parameterized degree of intentionality (quantifying the extent to which the
dots chased each other), and found that pSTS activation correlated with this
parameter.
A
separate body of research has implicated the posterior superior temporal sulcus
in the perception of intentionality in human action; this area is also involved
in perceiving biological motion, including body, eye, mouth, and point-light
display motion. One study found increased pSTS activation while watching a
human lift his hand versus having his hand pushed up by a piston (intentional
versus unintentional action). Several
studies have found increased pSTS activation when subjects perceive a human
action that is incongruent with the action expected from the actor's context
and inferred intention. Examples would be: a human performing a reach-to-grasp
motion on empty space next to an object, versus grasping the object a human shifting eye gaze toward empty
space next to a checkerboard target versus shifting gaze toward the target an unladen human turning on a light
with his knee, versus turning on a light with his knee while carrying a pile of
books; and a walking human pausing as he passes behind a bookshelf, versus
walking at a constant speed. In
these studies, actions in the "congruent" case have a straightforward
goal, and are easy to explain in terms of the actor's intention. The
incongruent actions, on the other hand, require further explanation (why would
someone twist empty space next to a gear?), and then apparently would demand
more processing in the STS. Note that this region is distinct from the temporo-parietal
area activated during false belief tasks. Also
note that pSTS activation in most of the above studies was largely
right-lateralized, following the general trend in neuroimaging studies of
social cognition and perception. Also right-lateralized are the TPJ activation
during false belief tasks, the STS response to biological motion, and the FFA
response to faces.
Neuropsychological evidence
has provided support for neuroimaging results regarding the neural basis of
theory of mind. Studies with patients suffering from a lesion of the frontal
lobes and the temporoparietal
junction of the brain (between
the temporal lobe and parietal lobe) reported that they have difficulty with some
theory of mind tasks. This shows that theory of mind abilities are associated
with specific parts of the human brain. However, the fact that the medial
prefrontal cortex and
temporoparietal junction are necessary for theory of mind tasks does not imply
that these regions are specific to that function. TPJ and mPFC may subserve
more general functions necessary for ToM.
Research
by Vittorio Gallese, Luciano Fadiga and Giacomo Rizzolatti has shown that some sensorimotor
neurons, which are referred to as mirror neurons, first discovered in the
premotor cortex of rhesus monkeys, may be involved in action understanding.
Single-electrode recording revealed that these neurons fired when a monkey
performed an action, as well as when the monkey viewed another agent carrying
out the same task. Similarly, fMRI studies with human participants have shown
brain regions (assumed to contain mirror neurons) that are active when one
person sees another person's goal-directed action.These data have led some
authors to suggest that mirror neurons may provide the basis for theory of mind
in the brain, and to support simulation theory of mind reading (see above)
However,
there is also evidence against the link between mirror neurons and theory of
mind. First, macaque monkeys have mirror neurons but do not seem to have a
'human-like' capacity to understand theory of mind and belief. Second, fMRI studies of theory of mind typically report
activation in the mPFC, temporal poles and TPJ or STS, but these brain areas are not part of
the mirror neuron system. Some investigators, like developmental psychologist
Andrew Meltzoff and
neuroscientist Jean Decety, believe that mirror neurons merely facilitate
learning through imitation and may provide a precursor to the development of
ToM. Others, like philosopher
Shaun Gallaghar, suggest that mirror-neuron activation, on a number of counts,
fails to meet the definition of simulation as proposed by the simulation theory
of mindreading.
However,
in a recent paper, Keren Haroush and Ziv Williams outlined the case for a group of neurons in primates' brains that uniquely
predicted the choice selection of their interacting partner. These primates'
neurons, located in the anterior cingulate cortex of rhesus monkeys, were
observed using single-unit recording while the monkeys played a variant of the
iterative prisoner's dilemma game. By identifying cells that represent
the yet unknown intentions of a game partner, Haroush & Williams' study
supports the idea that theory of mind may be a fundamental and generalized
process, and suggests that anterior
cingulate cortex neurons may
potentially act to complement the function of mirror neurons during social
interchange.
In autism
Several
neuroimaging studies have looked at the neural basis theory of mind impairment
in subjects with Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism (HFA). The first
PET study of theory of mind in autism (also the first neuroimaging study using
a task-induced activation paradigm in autism) replicated a prior study in
normal individuals, which employed a story-comprehension task. This study found
displaced and diminished mPFC activation in subjects with autism. However,
because the study used only six subjects with autism, and because the spatial
resolution of PET imaging is relatively poor, these results should be
considered preliminary.
A
subsequent fMRI study scanned normally developing adults and adults with HFA
while performing a "reading the mind in the eyes" task: viewing a
photo of a human's eyes and choosing which of two adjectives better describes
the person's mental state, versus a gender discrimination control. The authors found activity in
orbitofrontal cortex, STS, and amygdala in normal subjects, and found no
amygdala activation and abnormal STS activation in subjects with autism.
A
more recent PET study looked at brain activity in individuals with HFA and
Asperger syndrome while viewing Heider-Simmel animations (see above) versus a
random motion control. In
contrast to normally developing subjects, those with autism showed no STS or
FFA activation, and significantly less mPFC and amygdala activation. Activity
in extrastriate regions V3
and LO was identical across the two groups, suggesting intact lower-level
visual processing in the subjects with autism. The study also reported
significantly less functional connectivity between STS and V3 in the autism
group. Note, however, that decreased temporal correlation between activity in
STS and V3 would be expected simply from the lack of an evoked response in STS
to intent-laden animations in subjects with autism. A more informative analysis
would be to compute functional connectivity after regressing out evoked
responses from all-time series.
A
subsequent study, using the incongruent/congruent gaze-shift paradigm described
above, found that in high-functioning adults with autism, posterior STS (pSTS)
activation was undifferentiated while they watched a human shift gaze toward a
target and then toward adjacent empty space. The
lack of additional STS processing in the incongruent state may suggest that
these subjects fail to form an expectation of what the actor should do given
contextual information, or that feedback about the violation of this
expectation doesn't reach STS. Both explanations involve an impairment in the
ability to link eye gaze shifts with intentional explanations. This study also
found a significant anticorrelation between STS activation in the
incongruent-congruent contrast and social subscale score on the Austism
Diagnostic Interview-Revised, but not scores on the other subscales.
In
2011, an fMRI study demonstrated that the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) of higher-functioning adults
with autism was not more selectively activated for mentalizing judgments when
compared to physical judgments about self and other rTPJ selectivity for
mentalizing was also related to individual variation on clinical measures of
social impairment: individuals whose rTPJ was increasingly more active for
mentalizing compared to physical judgments were less socially impaired, while
those who showed little to no difference in response to mentalizing or physical
judgments were the most socially impaired. This evidence builds on work in
typical development that suggests rTPJ is critical for representing mental
state information, irrespective of whether it is about oneself or others. It
also points to an explanation at the neural level for the pervasive
mind-blindness difficulties in
autism that are evident throughout the lifespan.
In schizophrenia
The
brain regions associated with theory of mind include the superior temporal
gyrus (STS), the temporoparietal
junction (TPJ), the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), the precuneus, and the
amygdala. The reduced activity in
the MPFC of individuals with schizophrenia is associated with the Theory of
mind deficit and may explain impairments in social function among people with
schizophrenia. Increased neural
activity in MPFC is related to better perspective-taking, emotion management,
and increased social functioning. Disrupted
brain activities in areas related to theory of mind may increase social stress
or disinterest in social interaction, and contribute to the social dysfunction
associated with schizophrenia.
Practical validity
Group
member average scores of theory of mind abilities, measured with the Reading
the Mind in the Eyes test (RME),
are suggested as drivers of successful group performance. In particular, high group average
scores on the RME are shown to be correlated with the collective intelligence
factor c defined as a group's ability to
perform a wide range of mental tasks a
group intelligence measure similar to the g factor for general individual
intelligence. RME is a ToM test for adults that shows sufficient test-retest
reliability and constantly
differentiates control groups from individuals with functional autism or
Asperger syndrome. It is one of the most widely accepted and well-validated
tests for ToM abilities within adults.
Evolution
The
evolutionary origin of theory of mind remains obscure. While many theories make
claims about its role in the development of human language and social cognition
few of them specify in detail any evolutionary neurophysiological precursors. A
recent theory claims that ToM has its roots in two defensive reactions, namely
immobilization stress and tonic immobility, which are implicated in the
handling of stressful encounters and also figure prominently in mammalian
childrearing practices (Tsoukalas, 2017). Their combined effect seems capable
of producing many of the hallmarks of theory of mind, e.g., eye-contact,
gaze-following, inhibitory control and intentional attributions.
Non-human
An
open question is if other animals besides humans have a genetic endowment and social environment that allows them to
acquire a theory of mind in the same way that human children do. This is a contentious issue because of
the problem of inferring from animal behavior the
existence of thinking or of
particular thoughts, or the existence of a concept of self or self-awareness,
consciousness and qualia. One difficulty with non-human studies of ToM is the
lack of sufficient numbers of naturalistic observations, giving insight into
what the evolutionary pressures might be on a species' development of theory of
mind.
Non-human
research still has a major place in this field, however, and is especially
useful in illuminating which nonverbal behaviors signify components of theory
of mind, and in pointing to possible stepping points in the evolution of what
many claim to be a uniquely human aspect of social cognition. While it is
difficult to study human-like theory of mind and mental states in species whose
potential mental states we have an incomplete understanding, researchers can
focus on simpler components of more complex capabilities. For example, many
researchers focus on animals' understanding of intention, gaze, perspective, or
knowledge (or rather, what another being has seen). Call and Tomasello's study that looked at understanding of
intention in orangutans, chimpanzees and children showed that all three species
understood the difference between accidental and intentional acts. Part of the
difficulty in this line of research is that observed phenomena can often be
explained as simple stimulus-response learning, as it is in the nature of any
theorizers of mind to have to extrapolate internal mental states from
observable behavior. Recently, most non-human theory of mind research has
focused on monkeys and great apes, who are of most interest in the study of the
evolution of human social cognition. Other studies relevant to attributions
theory of mind have been conducted using plovers and dogs, and have shown preliminary evidence of
understanding attention—one precursor of theory of mind—in others.
There
has been some controversy over the interpretation of evidence purporting to
show theory of mind ability—or inability—in animals.[ Two examples serve as demonstration: first,
Povinelli et al. (1990) presented chimpanzees with the
choice of two experimenters from whom to request food: one who had seen where
food was hidden, and one who, by virtue of one of a variety of mechanisms
(having a bucket or bag over his head; a blindfold over his eyes; or being
turned away from the baiting) does not know, and can only guess. They found
that the animals failed in most cases to differentially request food from the
"knower". By contrast, Hare, Call, and Tomasello (2001) found that subordinate chimpanzees
were able to use the knowledge state of dominant rival chimpanzees to determine
which container of hidden food they approached. William Field and Sue Rumbaugh have
no doubt that bonobos have developed ToM and cite their communications with a
well-known captive bonobo, Kanzi, as evidence.
In
a 2016 experiment, ravens Corvus corax were shown to take into account visual
access of unseen conspecifics. It is suspected that "ravens can generalize
from their own perceptual experience to infer the possibility of being
seen"
A
2016 study published by evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Krupenye brings
new light to the existence of ToM, and particularly false beliefs, in non-human
primates.
Selected
and edited from Wikipedia
** **
Your initial reading is that
this is 'good stuff' meaning it is of high interest to you in helping to
resolve an 'unknown' within. - Amorella
1356 hours. A spook or an alien, no doubt. [dark humored comment out of
the blue]
Or me, boy; the Amorella.
1357 hours. It is about time for lunch. Later.
1643 hours. Lunch was excellent! We had Grandma's meatloaf, asparagus,
and each had half a bakes potato. Carol is still a great cook.
You spent time editing and have the article
on Theory of the Mind ready. - Amorella
1645 hours. As I was reading and editing I was thinking of how much
pleasure I have doing what most people would call a chore. Copying, pasting and
editing reminds me of what it might have been like (romantically) to have been
a monk copying old texts. Of course I have all the modern conveniences. When I
edit I reread from a different position; that is, I am thinking about what I
need from the article and also what my audience might like (to a point). This
blog is not for an audience exactly though it has always allowed for one.
Sharing is a fine activity, being willing to share, is as important as actually
sharing at least in the blog's greater context. What would I ever do without Wikipedia?
Maybe,
write books. Post. Amorella
***
Grandma’s Story 3.h17
Hello, this is Grandma. First, about three
thousand years ago, in nine-o-nine before the common era, we have a love story
between a Druidic-like priestess, Gadelin of the North Woods and a Druidic-like
priest, Mardynn Herremon of the East Woods, a cousin of Simon Breac the High
King of Ireland. King Simon had killed a king to become king. He had the first
royal executed by the drawing of four horses, each attached to a limb of the
old king, in each of the cardinal directions. King Simon, whose father was Giallchadh
ruled from the year nine-o-nine before the common era, for six years until he
was avenged by Duach Fionn, son of the murdered king. It was in the last year
of the reign of Simon Breac that the priestess and priest’s love interest
began. Gadelin was in her mid-twenties and Mardynn was nearly thirty when,
at the Great Wooden Hall of Tara, they were ordered by King Simon to compete to
be the new official seer for the king for the old one had died quite strangely
in a drowning during earlier Spring rains along the ancient river valley.
Simon who was much older, was attracted to
Gadelin because of her long coal-black hair, fair skin and strong as a horse,
athletic build. She was as a woman warrior. Simon liked his women to show their
physical strength in love making. As a priestess she used her mind first and
her body second. The king liked her the other way around. No woman ever said no
to a king unless it was his queen. Gadelin was no exception. She did not mind
sleeping with King Simon as much as she did setting up the appointments to do
so. She always slept with him three days before a full moon, during a full
moon, and again the third day after the full moon. The Druid priestess slept
with the king three nights a month, and she had been doing so for three months
running when King Simon Breac ordered her to compete with her known lover
Druid-like Priest Mardynn to be his official Seer.
The next day with less fanfare than usual he
announced the competition in Court at the great wooden hall atop the five hundred
and fifty foot high Hill of Tara. Mardynn, of the greater royal family, slept
with Gadelin on the half moon. No one knew who she slept with during the first
and third quarter moons, but it was assumed she had chosen one commoner for
each. She bedded four men on the condition of the Moon at least once a month no
matter what.
This because Gadelin was in love with the moon
god, and she believed the moon was making love with her rather than each of the
four men. None of the four realized this, and as there were four men, she came
to think of each of them as one of the cardinal points of the surface of the
moon. Thus, Simon the King was the North, and Mardynn the South point. As the
Hall of Tara was aligned North to South she felt she would gain much wisdom
from Mother Earth in the process. There was no reason for her to think the
competition would be much. She controlled both men one night each month, and
the king two others, she saw to that. When Gadelin of the North Woods had a man
in bed she was always in control. Always, since she was twelve, living north of
the River Boyne, and she was in control then too, with a cousin who was
fourteen.
During warm evening of the next half-moon after
the competition had been announced, Priestess Gadelin confidently strolled into
Mardynn’s small round stone walled hut in the East Woods, south of the River
Boyne, only to discover her priest was not at home. She sniffed at the air and
did not detect his scent. ‘He has not been here all day or last night,’ she
thought. She smiled, still confident. ‘He’ll be here. I know he thinks of me as
the moon goddess when we make love. A man in love with a goddess gives himself
completely.’ Cleverness spread across her cheeks, ‘He cannot know that I make
love with the moon god at the same time.’ Mardynn will be here, he would not
want to disappoint his moon goddess.
Now, it was true that when they made love both
were thinking of the moon, but neither understood which half was which. Was the
goddess visible or was the god? Both were in love with the visible half, but
only I, Grandma knew that.
During warm evening of the next half-moon after
the competition had been announced, Priestess Gadelin confidently strolled into
Mardynn’s small round stone walled hut in the East Woods only to discover her
priest was not at home. She sniffed at the air and did not detect his scent.
‘He has not been here all day or last night,’ she thought. She smiled, still
confident. ‘He’ll be here. I know he thinks of me as the moon goddess when we
make love. A man in love with a goddess gives himself completely.’ Cleverness
spread across her cheeks, ‘He cannot know that I make love with the moon god at
the same time. Mardynn surely will be here, he would not want to disappoint his
moon goddess.’
Now, it was true that when both made quite
passionate love each was thinking of the moon, but neither understood which
half was which. Was the goddess visible or was the god? Both were in love with
the visible half, but only I, Grandma knew that. Half a love is not nearly
enough in the grander scheme of things
when they are mixing with no things.
Trouble was brewing and neither of them realized it.
Mardynn stood in the peaceful Boyne River
Valley overlooking a much clearer water than the muddy Spring rains had brought
rumbling down the hills in a heavy brown high table of water. He glanced back
at the lean to he had made for the night. It was an easily gathered mass of
limbs and small trees with two large trees as a backdrop and two thigh sized
vertical poles out front about seven feet. Two more five feet high poles from trees
to verticals and sloped down about a foot.
Mardynn threw together a roof of assorted
sticks, most about a forearm thick. He had been busy looking for the natural
signs that might give him a hint to a prophecy for King Simon. He had memorized
and notated with various colored pebbles the kind of creatures he had seen on
his meandering four hour journey from his hut along what would later be called
the River Boyne. He had followed a blue heron to begin with. That was the first
sign, he was sure of it. He watched several frogs in a streamlet. Flitting
about the frogs and their environ were little finger long blue bodied
dragonflies with black wings. They sat
rather than jumping in when he walked by.
Some frogs stared at him, never taking their
eyes off the priest who wore four colors. People knew he was at least a second
cousin of the king as the royal family wore five colors. A solid color denoted
a commoner. Those with two or three colors had a trade, inheritance or a good
marriage might move a commoner up the social ladder a rung or two. Blue was a
good color to begin from. The sunrise was orange, that was another good sign.
The mass of frogs along the banks of the streamlet were brown with green heads
and eyes. He had seen a black snake and another woodland snake with three
yellow stripes rather than the normal two. Bountiful and healthy foliage along
the stream gave him green. Red was sprinkled on the path from where a large
hawk had been eaten by a red-haired fox. Salmon and trout are bountiful in the
river itself. It is a good day, he thought.
Then Mardynn noticed the evening. He forgot it
was the night of the half moon. His night with the moon-mistress. Gadelin will
never forgive me, he thought. Never. The wind picked up. Thunder in the
distance north. A bad sign. She is from the North Woods. What will she think of
me? Together we are one with the moon, the sky’s lesser light. The moon was not
yet up but there was no way he could be back before she had left his hut. She
too would miss her night with the Moon. She has always bedded on the half and
the full. Always, since she was twelve. Who will she choose on this night? She
will have to find someone, and so will I. This is not a good sign at all. We
are in two different places and the moon is also in two, the visible and the
invisible. Then the concept hit him like a falling limb. I am visible, and she is not. Can it be possible for me to love her
without her being here and still love the moon goddess at the same time?
Priestess Gadelin sat down on his deer skinned
mat and stared at the tree branches and limbs at the ceiling of the hut. She
could see out the smoke hole. It was cloudy and the wind picked up. She could
hear thunder in the distance. ‘Who will I sleep with,’ she thought. She walked the fifty
feet to the River Boyne and glanced up and down river. No one. She walked
slowly back to the hut and sat at the doorway. She got up to leave, hesitated,
and looked in at the empty floor mat. Can I sleep with the moon god without
Mardynn present? How can I make love with my priest even though he is not here?
Is it possible? ‘I have never, since I was twelve, been to bed without a man on
the half and full moon. Never.
The option had never presented itself before,
you see, smiled Grandma, and she winked knowingly. A priestess and a priest are
about to have an enchantment they did not expect, but someone will pay for
their pleasure. This is the way it is. Nothing can be done about it as far as
these books are concerned. The enchantment is a spiritual singing. Muse-ic.
Muse-I-Can. Musician. Magician, the art of the ancient Magi. An In Chant Meant. Now, for modern readers
I’ll update this mystical musing. Some words are similar to the intent of those
times, some are not. This is a flavor reading not an actual tasting.
Gadelin stripped and lay naked on his mat with
the June sweat from her back, butt and thighs dampening his deerskin. By the
grace of the moon, she thought, I will make love in mind alone. She closed her
eyes, spread her arms and loins to create the five points.
Gadelin breathed in imagination and breathed
out erotic fantasy. Dance of a moon struck sphere, half here, half there, and
whole again, whole again, hole again. Faeryland spirals on stone next to a
dance of two lines
one
being and one not being. I am a stone singing not of this world -- the moon
moves, and I move with it. I am carried away. In and out, In and out. These are
the first steps of a dance like no other. Parallel lines, parallel lives. The
flashing color wheel spins an always green, to orange, to blue, to yellow, to
red, to green, to orange, to blue, to yellow, to red. The mind’s a rainbow
without a mist. A half-moon spinning wheel spinning fast half to an apparent
full. I, Gadelin of the North Woods, chance the inner light drunken with
delight. Moon god, moon god, the feast is set, the meal begun.
Ten miles to the west along the south
side of the River Boyne, Mardynn sat under his lean to and stared at the half
moon moving the heavy clouds by. Lightning collapsed to thunder though in the
distance it rolled the river valley. I can love the moon, he thought. Better
half a moon than no moon at all. My mistress and I will be one tonight,
priestess or not. Mistress moon is bone white while I am the dark shadowed
half. He lay quietly and closed his eyes to trance. We ride the sky
together. Round and around my mistress
moon goes and where the she moon
stops is beneath my toes.
Peace is but a piece of the whole. Holy is the
night moon. Holy is the inner moon of mind.
It reflects my inner light, the inner moon stone of the mind moves and a tunneling is born to connect
a dream to reality unborn. The colors of the world are but flavors in the mind.
Food of the gods turn hearts to stone and stone to dust. Earth, air, fire, and
water, my skin turns cold, my heart turns hotter. She that is known cannot be
unknown. Love is a leap of one human consciousness into another. Empathy by
design, an intellectual surface with a coat of divine, or so it seems, and it
seems that what is torn asunder belied by the thunder. White lightning again
strikes the nearby Ash.
Mardynn thinks, I am in naked thunder uprooted.
I am a furry dot and a dash. A tale timid with large ears while awaiting the
morning to be nibbled into day. A gold
eyed white rabbit will run from the glaring red fox of the noon day sun. An
eye in a whole mind’s hiding. The moon wheel spins half round, half round, with
nothing a sight and nothing in sound. Such a quiet night goddess midst the roar
of nearby thunder. Flowers like angels’ breath pedal from the root of night
into the stem of morning fog. Love in the
mind is a dangerous thing when two threads of consciousness equally sing.
Away, in his hut Gadelin blinks flat
out. A golden rabbit runs. My mind
molds seams of the sacred well hole full of words and walled prophetic dreams.
I am flying the moon and lying on Earth at the same time. The stones sing and
dance and I am air. My long black hair is as a comet in the sky that moves
across my immortal soul that is out there and in here at the same time. My
heart is in the daylight sun, but my soul aches for a sliver of the moon to
bring to an end this little tune. If the
gold rabbit runs, can the red fox be far behind?
The separate and paired enchantment
continued throughout the night, several hours of erotically imagined ritual
until though separate and apart the priest and priestess both soundly slept,
exhausted by the long love of half a moon each while each being but a short ten
miles of river away.
Grandma twirled and did her own dance of
lightning, then clapped her hands but once. She turned to Gray and said, “What
is, is not, as the two each see it, both seers misinterpret and miss the secret
message for the forty-fourth great high king of Ireland. And, before the long
and the short of it, King Simon found four enemy horsemen at his door. Revenge
was taken for his killing a king six years before. King Simon Breac was pulled
four horses out to the ground that very half-moon morning. That’s how much good
the seer competition did him. It did him in.
Round and round and round she goes,
And where she stops nobody knows;
To mistake
Fate for Necessity’s Call,
Is to
mistake Moby Dick for an Artic narwhal.
So, from
wise-old Grandma's toothy gums
Merlyn's
mind from past to future dream this way comes.
© The Merlyn's Mind trilogy by orndorff
***
