A. Karmiloffsmith et al., THERE A SOCIAL MODULE - LANGUAGE, FACE PROCESSING, AND THEORY OF MINDIN INDIVIDUALS WITH WILLIAMS-SYNDROME, Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 7(2), 1995, pp. 196-208
Many species can respond to the behavior of their conspecifics. Human
children, and perhaps some nonhuman primates, also have the capacity t
o respond to the mental states of their conspecifics, i.e., they have
a ''theory of mind.'' On the basis of previous research on the theory-
of-mind impairment in people with autism, together with animal models
of intentionality, Brothers and Ring (1992) postulated a broad cogniti
ve module whose function is to build representations of other individu
als. We evaluate the details of this hypothesis through a series of ex
periments on language, face processing, and theory of mind carried out
with subjects with Williams syndrome, a rare ge genetic neurodevelopm
ental disorder resulting in an uneven linguisticocognitive profile. Th
e results are discussed in terms of how the comparison of different ph
enotypes (e.g., Williams syndrome, Down syndrome, autism, and hydrocep
haly with associated myelomeningocele) can contribute both to understa
nding the neuropsychology of social cognition and to current thinking
about the purported modularity of the brain.