The idea that autistic people have poor "theory of mind" is a myth, with no supporting evidence. I'm sure Simon Baron–Cohen believed it, but all the experiments he ran to support it are flawed. Last I checked, he considers the theory discredited.
The true observation is more like “untrained people have a better intuition for the behaviour of people who think like them”. When the researchers are all allistic, and the experiments are all based on allistic psychology, the researchers find that autistic people “don't understand other people” – but that's experimental error.
I expect we'll be stuck with this ToM myth for a while, like we're stuck with Sigmund Freud's nonsense. (I mean, “Oedipus complex”, seriously? We have empirical evidence for the Westermarck effect!) But that doesn't make it true.
It's not controversial. It is wrong (or, at least, misleading), since:
• Allistic people have difficulty recognising the internal states of autistic people; and
• Autistic people have considerably less difficulty recognising the internal states of autistic people (even though there are fewer autistic people from which to learn that skill).
It's placing "blame" on autistic people for what's actually an emergent phenomenon of neurodiverse groups. See doi:10.1177/1362361320919286 "Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective", and follow up on any sentences that strike your fancy until you have an opinion.
Comments
The idea that autistic people have poor "theory of mind" is a myth, with no supporting evidence. I'm sure Simon Baron–Cohen believed it, but all the experiments he ran to support it are flawed. Last I checked, he considers the theory discredited.
The true observation is more like “untrained people have a better intuition for the behaviour of people who think like them”. When the researchers are all allistic, and the experiments are all based on allistic psychology, the researchers find that autistic people “don't understand other people” – but that's experimental error.
I expect we'll be stuck with this ToM myth for a while, like we're stuck with Sigmund Freud's nonsense. (I mean, “Oedipus complex”, seriously? We have empirical evidence for the Westermarck effect!) But that doesn't make it true.
I don't think its controversial to say that autistic people often have difficulty recognizing the internal states of others.
It's not controversial. It is wrong (or, at least, misleading), since:
• Allistic people have difficulty recognising the internal states of autistic people; and
• Autistic people have considerably less difficulty recognising the internal states of autistic people (even though there are fewer autistic people from which to learn that skill).
It's placing "blame" on autistic people for what's actually an emergent phenomenon of neurodiverse groups. See doi:10.1177/1362361320919286 "Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective", and follow up on any sentences that strike your fancy until you have an opinion.