#theory-of-mind

#theory-of-mind

Play first stirs in the mutual, musical back-and-forth cooing of mother and infant. This proto-play practices attunement. Before we learn to talk, we learn to chortle and gurgle and babble and hum along. Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson noted that this pleasurable and surprising dialog "negotiates the first interpersonal encounters, the light of the eyes, the features of the face, and the sound of the name [as they each] become essential ingredients of a first recognition by the primal other."

Music trains our theory of mind -our cognitive ability to infer and attribute mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions) to others. In a live performance, we are challenged to figure out the state of mind of the composer, his characters, the performers, and ourselves, the listeners. In this contemporary time of increasing censorship and decreasing funding, of processed news and embedded marketing, conscious listening to classical music is a way to revive our "theory of mind" defense.

Many animals use deception to get what they want. Most of these sneaky tactics are instinctual; however, a few creatures engage in tactical deception: They adapt their tricks depending on their goal or audience. Tactical deception involves some sophisticated cognition, and research on the phenomenon often focuses on primates or brainy birds like corvids. Recently, scientists suggested that a different group of animals may be ideal for the study of tactical deception: cephalopods.

For a lot of adults on the autism spectrum, navigating everyday life can feel like stepping into a movie where everyone else got the script ahead of time and you didn't. People seem to know how to move, what to say, and how to react. There are rules, cues, gestures, and tones, most of them unspoken, and yet somehow understood by everyone else. If you're autistic, it can feel like everyone's fluent in a social language you were never taught.