For centuries people have distinguished themselves from animals by citing possession of a uniquely human “mind”. A more recently
studied aspect of this uniqueness is our ability to accurately imagine the thoughts and intentions of others. Called a Theory of Mind, or “ToM”, possession of this capacity has been tacitly assumed to depend on another; the ability to mentally
reconstruct personal incidents from our pasts. There is experimental evidence that the ability to envision past personal events is a prerequisite to imagining future ones but, no data suggests that it is also required for ToM capability, despite the fact that this seems likely. Recently, scientists at York University and the Rotman Research Institute in Ontario, Canada, examined this question by comparing two brain-injured subjects, who were unable to mentally reconstruct personal events from their pasts, with fourteen people who had the skill intact. On a battery of standard tests that measured the subjects’ abilities to infer the thoughts of others (and indicate the operation of a ToM), the scores of the impaired individuals were nearly identical with those of the unimpaired participants. From this the researchers concluded that an inability to mentally reconstruct past personal events does not preclude the characteristics of a ToM. That is, it is entirely possible for a person to lack this hallmark of the human “mind” and still exhibit this trait of human consciousness. This work, and its conclusion, has important ramifications for theoretical and clinical psychology. In the former case it denies a previously assumed connection between one aspect of self-awareness and the ToM. In the latter, it could affect the details of diagnosis for mental impairments like autism.