Phase III- Second Order Belief
Overview: During Phase III, the patient is told that they will be asked to help tell a number of stories. Each story involves two characters: Alice and Greg. The patient is told that both Alice and Greg have thoughts about what is happening in each story. Sometimes each character’s thoughts will stay the same over several turns of events, and sometimes their thoughts will change. In addition, in some stories one character will know something that the other character does not know, and in some stories one of the characters will lie to the other character. This knowledge or lack of knowledge will alter one character’s thoughts but not the others. The patient is instructed to observe each situation to help decide when the characters’ thoughts change and when their thoughts do not.
- Task I – Alice and Greg view an object; generate 5 probable thoughts about the object for the 2 characters.
- Task II – Alice goes upstairs and thinks about object, generates 5 probable thoughts about the object for each character.
- Task III – Alice is upstairs thinking about the object and Greg remains downstairs. The object downstairs is altered by Greg; generate 5 probable thoughts about the object for each character and provide one common association and one difference between Alice and Greg’s thoughts about the object.
- Task IV – Alice is upstairs talking on the phone to Greg about object. The patient is reminded that these are accurate beliefs about the object. The patient is told that Greg says——about the object (patient is asked whether the statement is accurate or inaccurate according to Greg’s beliefs/knowledge).
- Task V – Alice is upstairs talking on the phone to Greg about object. Greg lies about the object and says—— (choose the correct multiple choice response).
Scoring: Responses to this task are scored as correct (1 point), delayed correct (.5), or incorrect (0). A patient can progress to the next task after receiving 90% accuracy on 5 trials of 10 items or 100% accuracy on 3 trials of 10 items.