The ToMI-2 consists of 60 items designed to tap a wide range of social cognitive understandings. Each item takes the form of a statement (e.g., “My child understands whether someone hurts another on purpose or by accident”) and is accompanied by a 20-centimeter continuum anchored by ‘definitely not’, ‘probably not’, ‘undecided’, ‘probably’, and ‘definitely.’ The respondent is asked to read a statement and draw a hash mark at the appropriate point along the continuum.
Each item was developed to serve as a face valid indicator of a particular dimension of theory of mind. The content of the ToMI-2 was guided by the immense theoretical and empirical research base in this area. This involved consideration of the theory of mind literature for typically developing children (from infancy to late childhood and early adolescence) as well as individuals with ASD from across the autism spectrum (i.e., nonverbal to high functioning). Each of the 60 items comprising the ToMI-2 belong to one of three empirically-derived subscales (i.e., Early, Basic, and Advanced) that reflect a developmental progression in theory of mind development. Three additional rationally-derived subscales (i.e., Emotion Recognition, Mental State Term Comprehension, Pragmatics) are also available. The ToMI-2 was normed on a ethnically-diverse U.S. sample and yields raw scores, percentile ranks, and standard scores which are calculated automatically using this website.
For more information about the ToMI-2, please see the Technical Manual for the Theory of Mind Inventory-2. You can also view the video tutorial provided below: