Empirical Failures of the Claim That Autistic People Lack a Theory of Mind

@article{Gernsbacher2019EmpiricalFO,
  title={Empirical Failures of the Claim That Autistic People Lack a Theory of Mind},
  author={Morton Ann Gernsbacher and Melanie Yergeau},
  journal={Archives of scientific psychology},
  year={2019},
  volume={7},
  pages={102 - 118}
}
The claim that autistic people lack a theory of mind—that they fail to understand that other people have a mind or that they themselves have a mind—pervades psychology. This article (a) reviews empirical evidence that fails to support the claim that autistic people are uniquely impaired, much less that all autistic people are universally impaired, on theory-of-mind tasks; (b) highlights original findings that have failed to replicate; (c) documents multiple instances in which the various theory… 
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41 Citations
Background Citations
18
Methods Citations
2
Results Citations
2

41 Citations

Theory of autistic mind: A renewed relevance theoretic perspective on so-called autistic pragmatic ‘impairment’
  • G. Williams
  • Psychology, Philosophy
    Journal of Pragmatics
  • 2021
The many theories of mind: eliminativism and pluralism in context
In recent philosophy of science there has been much discussion of both pluralism, which embraces scientific terms with multiple meanings, and eliminativism, which rejects such terms. Some recent work…
Judging meaning: A domain-level difference between autistic and non-autistic adults
TLDR
The data suggested more general information-processing differences when making judgements about communicative stimuli, which support the idea of a subtle domain-level difference in pragmatics in autistic people, while questioning the basis of this difference and highlighting substantial variability in skills across groups.
Autistic People Do Enhance Their Selves
TLDR
The results challenge the claim that autistic people are immune to reputation management and suggest that autisticPeople are as susceptible to social desirability and self-enhancement as non-autistic people are.
Knowing me, knowing you: Spontaneous use of mentalistic language for self and other in autism
TLDR
It is found that autistic and non-autistic adults were comparable in the number of statements about physical traits they made, and investigating spontaneous use of language for statements reflecting about mental states enables us to look into difficulties with implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states.
What Do New Findings About Social Interaction in Autistic Adults Mean for Neurodevelopmental Research?
TLDR
The reconceptualization of social cognition is discussed to consider such difficulties as examples of bidirectional, multifaceted misattunement between autistic and nonautistic individuals to provide empirical support for the views that the autistic community has proposed over the past 2 decades.
A Quick Measure of Theory of Mind in Autistic Adults: Decision Accuracy, Latency and Self-Awareness
TLDR
A quick, forced-choice version of the Adult Theory of Mind (A-ToM) test is evaluated, which permits measurement of response latency and self-awareness, with response characteristics on both measures enhancing understanding of the nature and extent of perspective taking difficulties in autistic individuals.
Examination of professional biases about autism: How can we do better?
TLDR
A critical eye is lent to six common assumptions/biases about autism that may influence neuropsychologists in their clinical work and encourages the profession to take a leadership role in examining biases and changing the clinical and research landscape so that it better reflects respectful discourse for individuals on the autism spectrum.
Theory of mind and decision science: Towards a typology of tasks and computational models
Accounting for the preference for literal meanings in ASC
  • Psychology
  • 2021
Impairments in pragmatic abilities, that is, difficulties with appropriate use and interpretation of language – in particular, non-literal uses of language – are considered a hallmark of Autism…
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