It is not an explanation it is a symptom related to ASD's.

His explanation theories are e.g. the extreme male brain etc

regards

Lode

I would say it is important to consider the pathogolisation and medical bias that informs a lot of autism research and theory; non-autistic people don't always consider that they impose their bias and make assumptions on how autistic minds work. Recent research is beginning to show that non-autistic people have theory of mind deficits when it comes to understanding the minds of autistic people (this phenomenon has been called the 'double empathy problem'); these deficits are not situated solely within the autistic person but within the interaction of differently wired brains.

Also worth bearing in mind theory of mind or cognitive empathy is not the same as affective empathy; many autistic people also subjectively describe feeling too much empathy, and bear in mind the difference between feeling empathy and expressing empathy which are different. Are objective measures all that reliable when it comes to people's internal experiences? Are ToM deficits stable when the tests for it are designed around children, how do we measure this over the lifespan? And we need to be careful not to define autism solely by deficits; autistic traits can be strengths in some contexts.

References:

Milton (2012) "On the ontological status of autism: the ‘double empathy problem’"

Fletcher-Watson & Bird (2020) "Autism and empathy: What are the real links?"

Chown (2014) "More on the ontological status of autism and double empathy"

Cage & Burton (2019) "Gender Differences in the First Impressions of Autistic Adults"

Cage et al. (2019) "Understanding, attitudes and dehumanisation towards autistic people"

Faso et al. (2015) "Evaluating Posed and Evoked Facial Expressions of Emotion from Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder"

Gernsbacher (2019) "Empirical failures of the claim that autistic people lack a theory of mind"

Heasman & Gillespie (2018) "Perspective-taking is two-sided: Misunderstandings between people with Asperger’s syndrome and their family members"

Jaswal & Akhtar (2019) "Being versus appearing socially uninterested: Challenging assumptions about social motivation in autism"

Komeda (2015) "Similarity hypothesis: understanding of others with autism spectrum disorders by individuals with autism spectrum disorders"

Morrison et al. (2019) "Outcomes of real-world social interaction for autistic adults paired with autistic compared to typically developing partners"

Sasson et al. (2017) "Neurotypical Peers are Less Willing to Interact with Those with Autism based on Thin Slice Judgments"

Sheppard et al. (2016) "How Easy is it to Read the Minds of People with Autism Spectrum Disorder?"

Russell et al. (2019) "Mapping the Autistic Advantage from the Accounts of Adults Diagnosed with Autism: A Qualitative Study"

I would recommend reading Sue Fletcher-Watson and Francesca Happens book on Autism. They give a great evaluation of the different cognitive theories for Autism. They explain the ToM hypothesis as a primary deficit model so modular impairment that appears a certain time point (I e. Evidenced by being able to pass /fail FB tasks). Now the approach is to take a developmental view that certain differences in childhood (e.g., in early attention etc) may lead to the features that characterise Autism. These differences develop over time into strengths or challenges.

Lode Goukens This is the essay topic I was given, therefore I cannot change it. The essay should indeed explore how Baron-Cohen et al with the Sally Anne task through the theory of mind can be useful to explain autism.

Marie Docherty The point of the essay as aforementioned is to give an explanation of autism through the Baron-Cohen theory of mind. The research question is therefore not focusing on all the different cognitive theories that can be relevant. Is there any information, journal article that you would suggest?

Charlotte Featherstone brilliant, many thanks

The book I mentioned covers how useful it is as a theory(three main areas are problematic: it's universality, specificity and primacy).

Baron-Cohen, S. (2000). Theory of mind and autism: A fifteen year review. Understanding other minds: perspectives for m developmental cognitive neuroscience, 2, 3-20.

Beardon, L. (2008). Is Autism really a disorder part two - theory of mind? Rethink how we think. Journal of inclusive practice in further and higher education, 1, 19-21

You might want to compare failing social cognition (Moskowitz), context blindness (Firth) and ToM. Overlap and differences.

Lode Goukens Marie Docherty thank you all. If you have any further suggestions please feel welcome to message me

I recommend that you pay attention to the following questions that you can relate to the theory: 1. The data about the atypical formation of the emotional system in children; 2. atypical intellectual development of children and 3. disturbances of processes of global (gestalt) perception.

The human psyche is a hierarchical and self-controlling system and the theory of mind is a synthesis of its main components.

Regards,

Neli Vasileva

Neli Vasileva thanks immensely again. This topic is such an interesting thing to explore

The latest data on autism problems prove disorders of the peripheral nervous system. For this reason, they do not send adequate signals to the brain and this leads to the impossibility of full integration of information.