mind-blindness
Sign in to saveAlso known as mind-blind, mindblindness, mindblind, mind blindness, mind blind
Mind-blindness, mindblindness or mind blindness is a widely disputed 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 less able to attribute mental states to others. According to the theory, a lack of ToM is considered equivalent to a lack of both cognitive and affective empathy. 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. The mind-blindness theory asserts tha
~7 min read
Article
8 sectionsContents
- Theory of mind
- Biological basis
- History and relationship to autism
- Mind-blindness of autistic people relative to non-autistic people
- Mind-blindness of non-autistic people relative to autistic people
- See also
- Citations
- Further reading
Mind-blindness, mindblindness or mind blindness is a widely disputed 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 less able to attribute mental states to others. According to the theory, a lack of ToM is considered equivalent to a lack of both cognitive and affective empathy. 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. The mind-blindness theory asserts that children who delay in this development will often develop autism.
One of the main proponents of mind-blindness was Simon Baron-Cohen, who later pioneered empathising–systemising theory. Over the years, the mind-blindness hypothesis has faced many criticisms from the scientific community due to inconclusive empirical evidence, mixed findings with different ToM tasks, repetitive failed replications of some (but not all) classic ToM studies, failure to take account into the bidirectional nature of social interactions (the double empathy problem), consistent evidence (including some studies by Baron-Cohen in the 2010s and 2020s of substantial heterogeneity of autistic people in ToM and empathy measures.