Mindblind Eyes: An Absence of Spontaneous Theory of Mind in Asperger Syndrome
Atsushi Senju,1,*
Victoria Southgate,1
Sarah White,2
Uta Frith2,3
Adults with Asperger syndrome can understand mental states such
as desires and beliefs (mentalizing) when explicitly prompted
to do so, despite having impairments in social communication.
We directly tested the hypothesis that such individuals nevertheless
fail to mentalize spontaneously. To this end, we used an eye-tracking
task that has revealed the spontaneous ability to mentalize
in typically developing infants. We showed that, like infants,
neurotypical adults’ (
n = 17 participants) eye movements
anticipated an actor’s behavior on the basis of her false
belief. This was not the case for individuals with Asperger
syndrome (
n = 19). Thus, these individuals do not attribute
mental states spontaneously, but they may be able to do so in
explicit tasks through compensatory learning.
2 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK.
3 Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus University Hospital, Norrebrogade 44, Building 10 G, 800 Aarhus C, Denmark.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: a.senju{at}bbk.ac.uk
