Mindblindness: Essay on Autism and the Theory of Mind

foreword by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby In Mindblindness, Simon\nBaron-Cohen presents a model of the evolution and development of\n\“mindreading.\” He argues that we mindread all the time,\neffortlessly, automatically, and mostly unconsciously. It is the\nnatural way in which we interpret, predict, and participate in\nsocial behavior and communication. We ascribe mental states to\npeople: states such as thoughts, desires, knowledge, and\nintentions.Building on many years of research, Baron-Cohen\nconcludes that children with autism, suffer from \“mindblindness\” as\na result of a selective impairment in mindreading. For these\nchildren, the world is essentially devoid of mental\nthings.Baron-Cohen develops a theory that draws on data from\ncomparative psychology, from developmental, and from\nneuropsychology. He argues that specific neurocognitive mechanisms\nhave evolved that allow us to mindread, to make sense of actions,\nto interpret gazes as meaningful, and to decode \“the language of\nthe eyes.\"A Bradford Book. Learning, Development, and Conceptual\nChange series

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