Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind

In Mindblindness Simon Baron-Cohen presents a model of the evolution and development of “mindreading.” He argues that we mindread all the time effortlessly automatically and mostly unconsciously. It is the natural way in which we interpret predict and participate in social behavior and communication. We ascribe mental states to people: states such as thoughts desires knowledge and intentions. Building on many years of research Baron-Cohen concludes that children with autism suffer from “mindblindness” as a result of a selective impairment in mindreading. For these children the world is essentially devoid of mental things. Baron-Cohen develops a theory that draws on data from comparative psychology from developmental psychology and from neuropsychology. He argues that specific neurocognitive mechanisms have evolved that allow us to mindread to make sense of actions to interpret gazes as meaningful and to decode “the language of the eyes.”