Mind-blindness

Mind-blindness, mindblindness or mind blindness is a 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 unable 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.

Not to be confused with aphantasia, the inability to produce mental images.

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 criticism 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, and consistent evidence (including some studies by Baron-Cohen) of substantial heterogeneity of autistic people in ToM and empathy measures.

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