creators_name: Carruthers, Peter
editors_name: Carruthers, Peter
editors_name: Smith, Peter K
type: bookchapter
datestamp: 2001-01-09
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:28
metadata_visibility: show
title: Autism as mindblindness: an elaboration and partial defence
ispublished: pub
subjects: dev-psy
subjects: phil-mind
full_text_status: public
keywords: autism, mind-blindness, executive function, self-knowledge, pretend play
abstract: In this chapter I defend the mind-blindness theory of autism, by showing how it can accommodate data which might otherwise appear problematic for it. Specifically, I show how it can explain the fact that autistic children rarely engage in spontaneous pretend-play, and also how it can explain the executive-function deficits which are characteristic of the syndrome. I do this by emphasising what I take to be an entailment of the mind-blindness theory, that autistic subjects have difficulties of access to their own mental states, as well as to the mental states of other people.
date: 1996
date_type: published
publication: Theories of theories of mind
publisher: Cambridge University Press
pagerange: 257-276
refereed: TRUE
citation:   Carruthers, Peter  (1996) Autism as mindblindness: an elaboration and partial defence.  [Book Chapter]     
document_url: http://cogprints.org/1193/1/autism.htm