Mind-blindness

Mind-blindness, mindblindness or mind blindness is a controversial 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 strong criticisms 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]} lack of consideration of the Double Empathy Problem, 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]}