Senju, Atsushi and Southgate, Victoria and White, S. and Frith, U. (2009) Mindblind eyes: an absence of spontaneous theory of mind in Asperger syndrome. Science 325 (5942), pp. 883-885. ISSN 0036-8075.
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Abstract
Adults with Asperger syndrome can understand mental states such as desires and beliefs (mentalizing) when explicitly prompted to do so, despite having impairments in social communication. We directly tested the hypothesis that such individuals nevertheless fail to mentalize spontaneously. To this end, we used an eye-tracking task that has revealed the spontaneous ability to mentalize in typically developing infants. We showed that, like infants, neurotypical adults’ (n = 17 participants) eye movements anticipated an actor’s behavior on the basis of her false belief. This was not the case for individuals with Asperger syndrome (n = 19). Thus, these individuals do not attribute mental states spontaneously, but they may be able to do so in explicit tasks through compensatory learning.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD) |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Dec 2010 12:22 |
| Last Modified: | 08 Aug 2025 23:42 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/2566 |
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