Abstract
The construct “theory of mind” stems from animal psychology research but has been extremely influential in theories of autism. This chapter explains the history and contemporary uses of the construct. It argues that while once the construct played a role in hypotheses about autism, it has come to serve only as a harmful characterization of autism. It then traces various kinds of harm caused by the use of the construct in characterizations of autism, including the dehumanization of autistic people, stigmatization of autism, the dismissal of first-person accounts of autism, and the false idea that autistic people lack empathy. It suggests that the continued use of the construct partly reflects a marketing strategy for autism researchers, whom it enables to illicitly link their theories to general theories of what makes humans special. Four different approaches to the characterization and understanding of autism are then considered, including neurodivergence framework and approaches based on the double-empathy problem, both approaches tied to a social model of disability, as well as approaches based on sensory symptoms of autism and interoception.
References
Abell, F., Happé, F., & Frith, U. (2000). Do triangles play tricks? Attribution of mental states to animated shapes in normal and abnormal development. Cognitive Development, 15(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2014(00)00014-9
Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Bradford.
Baron-Cohen, S. (2000a). The evolution of a theory of mind. In M. Corballis & S. E. G. Lea (Eds.), The descent of mind: Psychological perspectives on hominid evolution (pp. 261–277). Oxford University Press.
Baron-Cohen, S. (2000b). Theory of mind and autism: A review. International Review of Research in Mental Retardation, 23, 169–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0074-7750(00)80010-5
Baron-Cohen, S. (2009). Autism: The empathizing-systemizing (E-S) theory. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1156(1), 68–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04467.x
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a ‘theory of mind’? Cognition, 21(1), 37–46.
Bermúdez, J. L. (2020). Cognitive science: An introduction to the science of the mind (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108339216
Bloechle, J., Huber, S., Klein, E., Bahnmueller, J., Moeller, K., & Rennig, J. (2018). Neuro-cognitive mechanisms of global Gestalt perception in visual quantification. NeuroImage, 181, 359–369. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.07.026
Bloom, P. (2004). Descartes’ baby: How the science of child development explains what makes us human. William Heinemann.
Bloom, P., & German, T. P. (2000). Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of theory of mind. Cognition, 77(1), B25–B31. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(00)00096-2
Bruneau, E. G., Pluta, A., & Saxe, R. (2012). Distinct roles of the ‘shared pain’ and ‘theory of mind’ networks in processing others’ emotional suffering. Neuropsychologia, 50, 219–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.11.008
Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2008). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later. Trends in Cognitive Science, 12(5), 187–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2008.02.010
Chapman, R. (2021). Neurodiversity and the social ecology of mental functions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(6), 1360–1372. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620959833
Chapman, R. (2023). Empire of normality: Neurodiversity and capitalism. Pluto Press. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=clS6zwEACAAJ
Dennett, D. C. (1978). Beliefs about beliefs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(4), 568–570.
Dwyer, P. (2022). The neurodiversity approach (es): What are they and what do they mean for researchers? Human Development, 66(2), 73–92. https://doi.org/10.1159/000523723
Garfinkel, S. N., Tiley, C., O’Keeffe, S., Harrison, N., Seth, A., & HD, C. (2016). Discrepancies between dimensions of interoception in autism: Implications for emotion and anxiety. Biological Psychiatry, 114, 117–126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.12.003
Garfinkel, S. N., Mclanachan, A., & Critchley, H. D. (2017). Interoceptive training for anxiety management in autism: Aligning dimension of interoceptive experience, ADIE (c). Psychosomatic Medicine, 79, A100.
Gernsbacher, M. A. (2018). Critical review of autism and theory and mind: A technical report. Open Science Framework.
Gernsbacher, M. A., & Yergeau, M. (2019). Empirical failures of the claim that autistic people lack a theory of mind. Archives of Scientific Psychology, 7(1), 102–118. https://doi.org/10.1037/arc0000067
Glenn, D. (2022). It is a book review. The Journal of New Paradigm Research 78(5):339–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/02604027.2022.2094194
Gori, S., Molteni, M., & Facoetti, A. (2016). Visual illusions: An interesting tool to investigate developmental dyslexia and autism spectrum disorder. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, 175. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00175
Gough, J. (2021). Does the Neurotypical human have a ‘theory of mind’? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders., 53, 853. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05381-2
Gough, J. (2022a). Defending human difference by raising the bar. Animal Sentience, 3(23), 54. https://doi.org/10.51291/2377-7478.1695
Gough, J. (2022b). The many theories of mind: Eliminativism and pluralism in context. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/20839/
Grandin, T. (1996). Emergence: Labeled autistics. Grand Central Publishing.
Halina, M. (2015). There is no special problem of mindreading in nonhuman animals. Philosophy of Science, 82(3), 473–490. https://doi.org/10.1086/681627
Halina, M. (2018). What apes know about seeing. In K. Andrews & J. Beck (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of philosophy of animal minds (pp. 238–246). Routledge.
Harman, G. (1978). Studying the chimpanzee’s theory of mind. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(4), 576–577. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00076743
Heyes, C. (2014). Submentalizing: I am not really Reading your mind. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 131–143. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691613518076
Hicks, A. (2023). Zombie Pseudoscience (4). https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXVyb2RpdmluZy5zdWJzdGFjay5jb20vZmVlZA/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXVyb2RpdmluZy5zdWJzdGFjay5jb20vcC9lcGlzb2RlLTQtem9tYmllLXBzZXVkb3NjaWVuY2U?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjol_n6s9CDAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ
Higashida, N., Yoshida, K. A., & Mitchell, D. (2016). The reason I jump: The inner voice of a thirteen-year-old boy with autism (19514288; Random House trade paperback edition.). Random House.
Huberle, E., & Karnath, H. O. (2012). The role of temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) in global Gestalt perception. Brain Structure & Function, 217(3), 735–746. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-011-0369-y
Jack, A. I., & Robbins, P. (2012). The phenomenal stance revisited. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 3(3), 383–403. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0104-5
Karvelis, P., Seitz, A. R., Lawrie, S. M., & Seriès, P. (2018). Autistic traits, but not schizotypy, predict increased weighting of sensory information in Bayesian visual integration. eLife, 7, e34115.
Krupenye, C., Kano, F., Hirata, S., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2016). Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs. Science, 354(6308), 110–114. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf8110
Lurz, R. (2011). Mindreading animals: The debate over what animals know about other minds. MIT Press.
Manalili, M. A. R., Pearson, A., Sulik, J., Creechan, L., Elsherif, M., Murkumbi, I., Azevedo, F., Bonnen, K. L., Kim, J. S., Kording, K., Lee, J. J., Obscura, M., Kapp, S. K., Röer, J. P., & Morstead, T. (2023). From puzzle to progress: How engaging with neurodiversity can improve cognitive science. Cognitive Science, 47(2), e13255. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13255
Milton, D. E. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008
Milton, D., Gurbuz, E., & López, B. (2022). The ‘double empathy problem’: Ten years on. Autism, 26(8), 1901–1903. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221129123
Ogawa, S., Iriguchi, M., Lee, Y.-A., Yoshikawa, S., & Goto, Y. (2019). Atypical social rank recognition in autism spectrum disorder. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 15657. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-52211-8
Oliver, M. (2013). The social model of disability: Thirty years on. Disability & Society, 28(7), 1024–1026. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2013.818773
Penn, D. C., & Povinelli, D. J. (2007). On the lack of evidence that non-human animals possess anything remotely resembling a ‘theory of mind’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 362(1480), 731–744. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2006.2023
Penn, D. C., Holyoak, K. J., & Povinelli, D. J. (2008). Darwin’s mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(2), 109–130. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X08003543
Povinelli, D. J. (2004). Behind the Ape’s appearance: Esca** anthropocentrism in the study of other minds. Daedalus, 133(1), 29–41. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027894
Povinelli, D. J., & Vonk, J. (2003). Chimpanzee minds: Suspiciously human? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(4), 157–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1364-6613(03)00053-6
Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? The Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 4, 515–526. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00076512
Quesque, F., & Rossetti, Y. (2020). What do theory-of-mind tasks actually measure? Theory and practice. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(2), 384–396. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619896607
Rennig, J., Bilalic, M., Huberle, E., Karnath, H. O., & Himmelbach, M. (2013). The temporo-parietal junction contributes to global gestalt perception-evidence from studies in chess experts. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 513. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00513
Robbins, P., & Jack, A. I. (2006). The phenomenal stance. Philosophical Studies, 127(1), 59–85. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-005-1730-x
Robertson, C. E., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2017). Sensory perception in autism. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 18(11), 671–684. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2017.112
Sacks, O. W. (2012). An anthropologist on Mars. Picador.
Saxe, R. (2010). The right temporo-parietal junction: A specific brain region for thinking about thoughts. In Handbook of theory of mind (pp. 1–35). Erlbaum.
Schaafsma, S. M., Pfaff, D. W., Spunt, R. P., & Adolphs, R. (2015). Deconstructing and reconstructing theory of mind. Trends in Cognitive Science, 19(2), 65–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2014.11.007
Schuwerk, T., Schurz, M., Muller, F., Rupprecht, R., & Sommer, M. (2017). The rTPJ’s overarching cognitive function in networks for attention and theory of mind. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(1), 157–168. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw163
Soper, H. V., & Murray, M. O. (2012). Autism. In C. A. Noggle, R. S. Dean, & A. M. Horton (Eds.), The encyclopedia of neuropsychological disorders (pp. 125–128). Springer.
Sorabji, R. (1993). Animal minds and human morals: The origins of the western debate. Duckworth.
Taylor, H., & Vickers, P. (2017). Conceptual fragmentation and the rise of eliminativism. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 7(1), 17–40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-016-0136-2
Tomasello, M., Call, J., & Hare, B. (2003a). Chimpanzees understand psychological states—The question is which ones and to what extent. Trends in Cognitive Science, 7, 153–156. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00035-4
Tomasello, M., Call, J., & Hare, B. (2003b). Chimpanzees versus humans: It’s not that simple. Trends in Cognitive Science, 7, 239–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00107-4
Walker, N. (2012). Throw away the master’s tools: Liberating ourselves from the pathology paradigm. In Loud hands: Autistic people, speaking (pp. 225–237). Autistic Press.
Walter, E., Dassonville, P., & Bochsler, T. M. (2009). A specific autistic trait that modulates visuospatial illusion susceptibility. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39(2), 339–349. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-008-0630-2
Wellman, H. M., & Liu, D. (2004). Scaling of theory-of-mind tasks. Child Development, 75(2), 523–541. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00691.x
Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception. Cognition, 13(1), 103–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(83)90004-5
Yergeau, M., & Huebner, B. (2017). Minding theory of mind. Journal of Social Philosophy, 48(3), 273–296. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12191
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Gough, J. (2024). Theory of Mind and Its Role in Theories of Autism. In: Bennett, G., Goodall, E. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Disability. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40858-8_15-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40858-8_15-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-40858-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-40858-8
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences