1. Grandin's deficit in emotional affect and empathic response:

Grandin does have a deficit in her ability to identify emotional affect in humans but not in animals. Grandin seemed to have not a surface but a deep level understanding of animals' emotion and can predict when animals will feel a certain way. It was suggested that perhaps Grandin could infer mental states of animal and not humans because animals only have basic emotions (fear, joy, etc.). Thus, it is at this level that Temple Grandin can understand and share the emotional affect and have empathetic responses. Humans, on the other hand, have many complex emotions that it is difficult for Grandin to understand and consequently infer their emotions. She is a late learner of intentionality, and as a consequence she lacks the proficiency that most normal adults have in understanding of intentions. However, in some respect she is not qualitatively different from other people, such as in her ability to be emotionally moved by babies and animals. It is quite plausibly that Grandin is actually more normal that one would give her credit for. She might be an extreme case of poor ability to interpret intentions. Individual differences in the ability to understand other people's beliefs and desires are likely to exist in the normal population

2. Grandin's appreciation of music:

Grandin does not have a true appreciation for music because she cannot infer the emotions that music is supposed to elicit. She hears the music but she has no feelings for it; "it doesn't move her in any way." It was suggested that this is perhaps due to Grandin's deficit in understanding others' intention and intentionality. Also, an appreciation of music needs some kind of resonance and when one lacks it (in the case of Grandin) then appreciating music becomes difficult if not impossible. Though it is difficult to say what is responsible for the resonance; it is probably mediated by social interactions. Everyone has their own opinion about music and in order to truly appreciate music and emotionally affected by it, it is important to share the feeling with someone else or have the ability to access your past experience in a similar social context. For example, if you hear the music before in a particular situation and then now you hear it again, you can access that past experience and thus, feel and be move in the same way. It is also possible to access one's feelings about music by complex interactions with others.

3. Simulation theory and theory theory explanation of Grandin's case:

Grandin's case favors a 'theory' theory of mind over a 'simulation' theory of mind. She seems to have an intact ability to simulate (at least non-emotional simulations). Grandin can put herself in others' shoe and has no problem with projection but she does have difficulties with specific contents. For example, say Grandin wants to pretend to be David. She would talk, walk, eat, etc. like David. Although she is fulfilling a certain role, it is not necessary for her to have the mental content to do it. She just needs to do things as David does and need not think and feel as David is thinking and feeling (whether she succeeds in the simulation of the emotional states in unclear). However, Grandin cannot construct the accurate theory because a certain content is lack.

4. Grandin's expertise in the use of non-intentional cues to predict behavior

Understanding intentions is useful in predicting people's future behavior. Since Grandin's intentional analysis is highly impaired, she might have refined the use of other tools that predict people's behavior, such as the sensitivity to covariation. This leads to a testable prediction: Grandin should perform better than most normal adults in a task that requires the use of covariation, provided that the task is such that no intentional cues are available.

5. Grandin's disorder: damage in a localized part of the brain?

The answer is unanimous in that it is difficult to pin point a part of the brain that is responsibility for the ability to detect intentions, emotional affect and others' mental states. Nothing is localized in the brain because everything is connected in some way to everything else; similar to that of muscle in the body. For example, when you have pain due to muscle soreness it is also not localized in one area but spread throughout your body. So you would ache in more than one area. Furthermore, since autism is a developmental disorder, deficits at early stages will affect later stages. For example, new strategies developed by the subject to cope with her deficit may remodel the brain connections, etc. These caveats notwithstanding, some researchers (e.g., Courchesne) have proposed that the cerebellum plays a central role in autism.

6. Autism - Asperberg - Normal Subjects

It is not clear whether Grandin's is a highly functional autistic, or a patient with Asperberg's syndrome. Moreover, there seems to be no clear qualitative distinction between these two syndromes, suggesting that autism may be a more extreme form of theory of mind deficit.

The next article that was discussed was the "communicative intentions" manuscript by Sabbagh. The manuscript addressed the difficulties in detecting communicative intention in autistic and right-hemisphere damage (RHD) people. There are four types of CI that autistic and RHD people have difficulties with: discourse tailoring, discourse inferences, non-canonical language and vocabulary. Besides having linguistic communicative intention, RHD people also have other deficits in intentions. For example, they have trouble focusing on global issues. RHD people can pass first-order false belief tasks but failed second-order false belief tasks. Whereas, autistic people have trouble passing the first-order false belief and would always failed the second-order false belief. Basically, these people lack the ability to do inferences. They have a goal in mind, formulate the question but not finding the answer.

The third discussed article was Phillips, Baron-Cohen, and Rutter's paper. The study was designed to investigate whether children use gaze (or eye contact) to detect others' intentions in ambiguous situation. Normal, mental handicap and autistic children were tested in the following situation:

1. An experiment gave the child a toy and then while the child is playing with the toy, the experimenter covered the child's hand, preventing the child from further activity (blocking).

2. An experiment offered the child a toy and when the child began reaching for it, the experiment withdrew the toy from the child (teasing).

3. An experiment offered the child a toy by either holding the toy in front of the child or placing it on the floor in front of the child (giving).

The only issue that came up during the discussion was problems with methodology in the design. Problem 1: Looking at the experimenter two out of four trials is considered as passing. Problem 2: The giving task is not considered as unambiguous and thus, the child would never look or have eye contact with an experimenter. The reason is that when a toy (novel object) is presented to a child, s/he will be too engaged in the object and thus, will not look at the experimenter.

Carpenter: In this study, the author looked at three levels of understanding of others' intentions in 2 - to 5-year-old autistic and developmental delayed children. In general, her results did not replicate that of Phillips et al's study. Carpenter found that there was no significant difference in the number of times autistic and developmental delayed children have eye contact with an experimenter in the "blocking" and "teasing" tasks. The class ended abruptly, therefore not much was said in regards to this poster. Only that there are certainly flaws in the design's methodology.