Mind-blindness

Mind-blindness, mindblindness or mind blindness is a theory initially proposed in 1990 that claims that all autistic people have a lack or developmental delay of theory of mind (ToM), meaning they are unable to attribute mental states to others.[1][2][3] According to the theory, a lack of ToM is considered equivalent to a lack of both cognitive and affective empathy.[4] In the context of the theory, mind-blindness implies being unable to predict behavior and attribute mental states including beliefs, desires, emotions, or intentions of other people.[5] The mind-blindness theory asserts that children who delay in this development will often develop autism.[4][6]

One of the main proponents of mind-blindness was Simon Baron-Cohen, who later pioneered empathising–systemising theory.[6] Over the years, the mind-blindness hypothesis has faced criticism from the scientific community[7] due to inconclusive empirical evidence, mixed findings with different ToM tasks, repetitive failed replications of some (but not all) classic ToM studies,[8][9][10][11] and consistent evidence (including some studies by Baron-Cohen) of substantial heterogeneity of autistic people in ToM and empathy measures.[12][13][14][15][16]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference cohen1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Baron-Cohen, Simon; Campbell, Ruth; Karmiloff-Smith, Annette; Grant, Julia; Walker, Jane (November 1995). "Are children with autism blind to the mentalistic significance of the eyes?". British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 13 (4): 379–398. doi:10.1111/j.2044-835x.1995.tb00687.x. ISSN 0261-510X. S2CID 34341464.
  3. ^ Frith, Uta (20 December 2001). "Mind Blindness and the Brain in Autism". Neuron. 32 (6): 969–979. doi:10.1016/S0896-6273(01)00552-9. PMID 11754830.
  4. ^ a b Jurecic, Ann (Spring 2006). "Mindblindness: Autism, Writing, and the Problem of Empathy". Literature and Medicine. 25 (1): 1–23. doi:10.1353/lm.2006.0021. PMID 17040082. S2CID 2822141.
  5. ^ Gallagher, Helen L.; Frith, Christopher D. (1 February 2003). "Functional imaging of 'theory of mind'" (PDF). Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 7 (2): 77–83. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(02)00025-6. PMID 12584026. S2CID 14873867.
  6. ^ a b Baron-Cohen, Simon (25 March 2009). "Autism: The Empathizing-Systemizing (E-S) Theory". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1156, The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience (1): 68–80. Bibcode:2009NYASA1156...68B. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04467.x. PMID 19338503. S2CID 1440395.
  7. ^ Dinishak, Janette; Akhtar, Nameera (June 2013). "A Critical Examination of Mindblindness as a Metaphor for Autism". Child Development Perspectives. 7 (2): 110–114. doi:10.1111/cdep.12026.
  8. ^ Boucher, Jill (2012). "Putting theory of mind in its place: psychological explanations of the socio-emotional-communicative impairments in autistic spectrum disorder". Autism. 16 (3): 226–246. doi:10.1177/1362361311430403. ISSN 1362-3613. PMID 22297199. S2CID 30738704.
  9. ^ Gernsbacher, Morton; Yergeau, Melanie (2019). "Empirical Failures of the Claim That Autistic People Lack a Theory of Mind". Archives of Scientific Psychology. 7 (1): 102–118. doi:10.1037/arc0000067. PMC 6959478. PMID 31938672.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference :7 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference smukler was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ Baksh, R. Asaad; Abrahams, Sharon; Bertlich, Maya; Cameron, Rebecca; Jany, Sharon; Dorrian, Terin; Baron-Cohen, Simon; Allison, Carrie; Smith, Paula; MacPherson, Sarah E.; Auyeung, Bonnie (2021-10-03). "Social cognition in adults with autism spectrum disorders: Validation of the Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT)". The Clinical Neuropsychologist. 35 (7): 1275–1293. doi:10.1080/13854046.2020.1737236. hdl:20.500.11820/ea02ab9c-73be-4e85-916a-7612aa640013. ISSN 1385-4046. PMID 32189564. S2CID 151487088.
  13. ^ Greenberg, David M.; Warrier, Varun; Allison, Carrie; Baron-Cohen, Simon (2018-11-27). "Testing the Empathizing–Systemizing theory of sex differences and the Extreme Male Brain theory of autism in half a million people". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (48): 12152–12157. Bibcode:2018PNAS..11512152G. doi:10.1073/pnas.1811032115. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 6275492. PMID 30420503.
  14. ^ Lombardo, Michael V.; Lai, Meng-Chuan; Auyeung, Bonnie; Holt, Rosemary J.; Allison, Carrie; Smith, Paula; Chakrabarti, Bhismadev; Ruigrok, Amber N. V.; Suckling, John; Bullmore, Edward T.; MRC AIMS Consortium; Bailey, Anthony J.; Baron-Cohen, Simon; Bolton, Patrick F.; Bullmore, Edward T. (2016-10-18). "Unsupervised data-driven stratification of mentalizing heterogeneity in autism". Scientific Reports. 6 (1): 35333. Bibcode:2016NatSR...635333.. doi:10.1038/srep35333. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 5067562. PMID 27752054.
  15. ^ Hajdúk, Michal; Pinkham, Amy E.; Penn, David L.; Harvey, Philip D.; Sasson, Noah J. (April 2022). "Heterogeneity of social cognitive performance in autism and schizophrenia". Autism Research. 15 (8): 1522–1534. doi:10.1002/aur.2730. ISSN 1939-3792. PMID 35460541. S2CID 248345497.
  16. ^ Bird, G.; Cook, R. (2013-07-23). "Mixed emotions: the contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of autism". Translational Psychiatry. 3 (7): e285. doi:10.1038/tp.2013.61. ISSN 2158-3188. PMC 3731793. PMID 23880881.