(see article link for The Sally Ann Test graphic)
Second in a Series
(from Wednesday September 17th)
Most of us do it without even thinking about it.
Whether we're looking at someone we know, or a person walking down the street, or even a photograph in a magazine, we often immediately try to figure out what the person is thinking or planning.
Is she looking at her watch because she wants to know the time, or is she trying to break off the conversation? Did he look up because something moved overhead, or because he's amazed by something I said?
Psychologists call this "theory of mind" -- that is, figuring out what is in someone else's mind -- and they say we start developing this skill as babies, before we learn how to talk.
But there is one group that is particularly poor at theory-of-mind cognition -- people with autism. And now, studies at Carnegie Mellon University have shed new light on what may be malfunctioning in autistic people's brains.
One of the hallmarks of autism is difficulty in social relationships. Children and adults with autism often have trouble making eye contact, interpreting facial expressions and behaving appropriately in social settings.
These behaviors can often embarrass parents and anger strangers. In his book "Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism," George Washington University anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker described how his autistic daughter had walked up to a female stranger and snapped her bra strap, and had once asked a rotund man, "Is there a baby in there?"
The Carnegie Mellon studies suggest that one of the key problems that underlie such behaviors is that the brain areas that do theory-of-mind processing are badly connected in people with autism. read more »




