Long Emily L, Catmur Caroline, Bird Geoffrey
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford.
Department of Psychology, King's College London.
Psychol Rev. 2025 Jan 9. doi: 10.1037/rev0000532.
The theory of mind (ToM) hypothesis of autism is the idea that difficulties inferring the mental states of others may explain social communication difficulties in autism. In the present article, we critically evaluate existing theoretical accounts, concluding that none provides a sufficient explanation of ToM in autism. We then evaluate existing tests of ToM, identifying problems that limit the validity of the conclusions that may be drawn from them. Finally, as an example of how the identified issues may be resolved, we describe work developing a psychological account of ToM (the Mind-space framework) and a new test of ToM accuracy (the Interview Task). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
自闭症的心理理论（ToM）假说认为，难以推断他人的心理状态可能解释了自闭症患者的社交沟通困难。在本文中，我们批判性地评估了现有的理论解释，得出的结论是，没有一种理论能充分解释自闭症中的心理理论。然后，我们评估了现有的心理理论测试，确定了一些问题，这些问题限制了从中得出的结论的有效性。最后，作为如何解决已确定问题的一个例子，我们描述了一项工作，该工作构建了一个关于心理理论的心理学解释（心理空间框架）和一种新的心理理论准确性测试（访谈任务）。（《心理学文摘数据库记录》（c）2025美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
