2013 Volume 51 Issue 2 Pages 105-113
Many published articles have supported the assumption of "mindblindness", according to which difficulties in understanding others' mind states produce serious social-communication impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. However, some studies have shown that performance on "theory of mind" tasks, which are thought to reflect one's abilities to represent others' mental states, does not predict social communication impairments in daily life. The present article proposes a hypothesis to replace the mindblindness assumption, based on study of a boy (11 years 5 months old) with high-functioning autism. "Theory of mind" tasks were examined, together with an attempt to analyze the boy's understanding of causal relations between his own and others' behavior and his own and others' states. The participant in the study could attribute the current states, including the mental states, of his own and others to others' past behavior, but he could not attribute them to his own past behavior. In other words, he could understand the causal relation between the current states of others and their past behavior, but could not do this in the case of his own past behavior. Although he passed "theory of mind" tasks, he showed many serious problems in his interactions with others. These findings suggest that if the self involved in social communication produces problems, difficulty in self-recognition may be another important factor in social-communication impairments. The discussion suggests that it would be important to focus on the effects of difficulties in self-recognition on social communication.
