n “Theory of mind, ” the ability to make inferences about others ’ mental states, seems to be a modular cognitive capacity that underlies humans ’ ability to engage in complex social interaction. It develops in several distinct stages, which can be measured with social reasoning tests of increasing dif�culty. Individuals with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism, perform well on simpler theory of mind tests but show de�cits on more developmentally advanced theory of mind tests. We tested patients with bilateral damage to orbito-frontal cortex (n = 5) and unilateral damage in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (n = 5) on a series of theory of mind tasks varying in dif�culty. Bilateral orbito-frontal lesion patients performed similarly to individuals with Asperger’s syndrome, performing well on simpler tests and showing de�cits on tasks requiring more subtle social reasoning, such as the ability to recognize a faux pas. In contrast, no speci�c theory of mind de�cits were evident in the unilateral dorsolateral frontal lesion patients. The dorsolateral lesion patients had dif�culty only on versions of the tasks that placed demands on working memory. n

Studies of amniotic testosterone in humans suggest that fetal testosterone (fT) is related to specific (but not all) sexually dimorphic aspects of cognition and behaviour.Ithas also been suggested that autism maybeanextreme manifestation of some male-typical traits, both in terms of cognition and neuroanatomy. In this paper,weexamine the possibility of al ink between autistic traits and fT levels measured in amniotic fluid during routine amniocentesis. Tw oi nstruments measuring number of autistic traits (the Childhood Autism Spectrum Te st (CAST) and the Child Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ-Child)) werec ompleted by these women about their children( N ¼ 235), ages 6-10 years. Intelligence Quotient (IQ) was measured in asubset of these children ( N ¼ 74). fT levels werep ositively associated with higher scores on the CAST and AQ-Child. This relationship was seen within sex as well as when the sexes werecombined, suggesting this is an effect of fTrather than of sex per se.Norelationships were found between overall IQ and the predictor variables, or between IQ and CAST or AQ-Child. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that prenatal androgen exposure is related to children exhibiting more autistic traits. These results need to be followed up in am uch larger sample to test if clinical cases of ASC have elevated fT. Many clinicalc onditions occur in males more often than females, including autism, dyslexia, specific language impairment, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and early onset persistent antisocial behaviour (Rutter,C aspi, &M offitt, 2003). Depression, anorexia, and the anxiety disordersd on ot show this male bias in sex ratio, raising the question of whether there are sex-linked or sex-limiting factors involved in the aetiology of those conditions that do exhibit this male bias. Autism in particular has been described as an extreme manifestation of certain sexually dimorphic

An experiment was devised to test the empathising–systemising (E–S) theory of autism. Three groups of participants took part in the study: males with Asperger Syndrome (AS) (n 18), males without AS, (n 44) and females from the general population (n 45). Each participant completed two tasks: one that involved empathising and another that involved systemising. On the empathising task, females scored significantly higher than con-trol males who in turn scored higher than males with AS. Conversely, females scored signif-icantly lower than both male groups on the systemising task, who did not differ significantly from each other. These results are in line with both the E–S theory of autism and the ‘extreme male brain ’ theory of autism. Alternative explanations of the results are also explored, including an interpretation through the idea of open and closed systems. KEY WORDS: Empathising; systemising; autism; asperger syndrome; theory of mind.

It has been suggested that theory of mind may rely on several precursors including gaze processing, joint attention, the ability to distinguish between actions of oneself and others, and the ability to repre-sent goal-directed actions. Some of these processes have been shown to be impaired in individuals with autism, who experience difficulties in theory of mind. However, little is known about action representa-tion in autism. Using two variants of a spatial compatibility reaction time (RT) task, we addressed the question of whether high-functioning individuals with autism have difficulties in controlling their own actions and in representing those of others. Participants with autism showed automatic response activa-tion and had no difficulties with response inhibition. When two action alternatives were distributed among pairs of participants, participants with autism represented a co-actor’s task, showing the same pattern of results as the matched control group. We discuss the possibility that in high-functioning individuals with autism, the system matching observed actions onto representations of one’s own actions is intact, whereas difficulties in higher-level processing of social information persist.

Mentalizing involves the ability to predict someone else's behavior based on their belief state. More advanced mentalizing skills involve integrating knowledge about beliefs with knowledge about the emotional impact of those beliefs. Recent research indicates that advanced mentalizing skills may be related to the capacity to empathize with others. However, it is not clear what aspect of mentalizing is most related to empathy. In this study, we used a novel, advanced mentalizing task to identify neural mechanisms involved in predicting a future emotional response based on a belief state. Subjects viewed social scenes in which one character had a False Belief and one character had a True Belief. In the primary condition, subjects were asked to predict what emotion the False Belief Character would feel if they had a full understanding about the situation. We found that neural regions related to both mentalizing and emotion were involved when predicting a future emotional response, including the superior temporal sulcus, medial prefrontal cortex, temporal poles, somatosensory related cortices (SRC), inferior frontal gyrus and thalamus. In addition, greater neural activity in primarily emotion-related regions, including right SRC and bilateral thalamus, when predicting emotional response was significantly correlated with more self-reported empathy. The findings suggest that predicting emotional response involves generating and using internal affective representations and that greater use of these affective representations when trying to understand the emotional experience of others is related to more empathy.

1 In this paper we attempt to make a distinction between egocentrism and allocentrism in social cognition, based on the distinction that is made in visuo-spatial perception. We propose that it makes a difference to mentalizing whether the other person can be understood using an egocentric (“you”) or an allocentric (“he/she/they”) stance. Within an egocentric stance, the other person is represented in relation to the self. By contrast, within an allocentric stance, the existence or mental state of the other person needs to be represented as independent from the self. We suggest here that people with Asperger syndrome suffer from a disconnection between a strong naïve egocentric stance and a highly abstract allocentric stance. We argue that the currently used distinction between first-person and third-person perspective-taking is orthogonal to the distinction between an egocentric and an allocentric stance and therefore cannot serve as a critical test of allocentrism.

a b s t r a c t The human voice conveys a variety of information about people's feelings, emotions and mental states. Some of this information relies on sophisticated Theory of Mind (ToM) skills, whilst others are simpler and do not require ToM. This variety provides an interesting test case for the ToM account of autism, which would predict greater impairment as ToM requirements increase. In this paper, we draw on psychological and pragmatic theories to classify vocal cues according to the amount of mindreading required to identify them. Children with a high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder and matched controls were tested in three experiments where the speakers' state had to be extracted from their vocalizations. Although our results confirm that people with autism have subtle difficulties dealing with vocal cues, they show a pattern of performance that is inconsistent with the view that atypical recognition of vocal cues is caused by impaired ToM.

We explored the relationships between ‘autistic ’ traits as measured by the AQ (Autism-

adults with and without autism spectrum conditions

Twenty years ago, Baron-Cohen and colleagues argued that autistic performance on false belief tests was explained by a deficit in metarepresentation. Subsequent research moved from the view that the mind has a domain-general capacity for metarepresentation to the view that the mind has a domain-specific mechanism for metarepresentation of mental states per se, i.e., the theory of mind mechanism (ToMM). We argue that 20 years of data collection in lesion patients and children with autism supports a more parsimonious view closer to that of the 1985 paper. Lower-level domain-specific mechanisms*e.g., tracking gaze, joint attention*interacting with higher-level domain-general mechanisms for metar-epresentation, recursion, and executive function can account for observed patterns of deficits in both autism and neurological patients. The performance of children with autism or orbitofrontal patients on ToM tests can be explained more parsimoniously by their deficits in lower-level domain-specific mechanisms for processing social information. Without proper inputs, the intact capacity for metarepresentation by itself cannot make correct ToM inferences. Children with autism have no impairment in false photograph tests because their metarepresentational capacity is intact and they have no impairment in inputs required for such tests. TPJ patients have equivalent deficits on ToM and non-ToM metarepresentational tasks, consistent with a failure in domain-general processing. If deficits on ToM tasks can result from deficits in low-level input systems or in higher-level domain-general capacities, postulating a separate ToM mechanism may have been an unnecessary theoretical move.