Autism and theory of mind: a cognitive model to understand symptomatology?

"Theory of Mind" is the ability to attribute mental states to self and othe rs, in order to predict and explain actions. It appears in normally-develop ing children between 3 and 4 years. Baron-Cohen et al. (1985) showed that m ost of the autistic children failed the ''Theory of Mind" tasks and this fi nding was taken as evidence for an autism-specific cognitive deficit, under lying communication and socialization handicaps. The "Theory of Mind" model has a clinical interest for the early detection, the specific diagnosis of autism and for educative and therapeutic uses. However, the "Theory of Min d" deficit hypothese in autism has been criticized: it doesn't account for all the abnormal features of autism. This deficit isn't specific, nor prima ry, while the early symptoms are present quite before the "Theory of Mind" emergence. Alternative cognitive theor-res appeared executive function defi cits and the weak "central coherence ", that attempt to explain some other clinical features of autism.