happenif I make that moveor about what might happenif such-and-such
were to be the situation.
It should also be noted that those with clinical expertise in treating
autistic children encounter a wide range of impairments and abnormalities
- including, in addition to the mind-reading-related impairments already
noted, such things asimpaired motor co-ordination,hyperactivity, and
excessive thirst. There is, therefore, certainly room for some scepticism as
to whether the whole range of impairments observed in the autistic syn-
drome could be due to a single primary deWcit, such as a deWcit in
mind-reading ability (Boucher, 1996). And it is indeed true both that the
false-belief tests can only be carried out – given present experimental
design, at least – on high-functioning autistic children with relatively good
linguistic abilities, and that a certain proportion of these autistic children
do pass the standard false-belief test. Are not these facts rather damaging
to theautism-as-mind-blindnesshypothesis?
Actually, all these facts are, on plausible assumptions, quite compatible
with the mind-blindness hypothesis. In theWrst instance, the fact that a
certain proportion of any group may pass a false-belief test should not be
taken as indicating a similar percentage of mind-reading-derived under-
standing of belief in that group. There will be some lucky-guess ‘passes’
generated simply by noticing and mentioning a salient location or action.
It is also probable that some high-functioning autistic children will have
developed their own theories or heuristics – quite diVerent from the innate
mind-reading knowledge-base of normal children – which may be ad-
equate for solving some psychological problems, though in a cognitively
more demanding way. (Compare the eVort involved in speaking a second
language with theXuency of a native tongue.) Tests involving rather more
diYcult tasks (such as second-order tasks involving the attribution of
beliefs about others’ states of mind) seem to show that autistic subjects
who pass on theWrst-order, Maxi-type, false-belief test do still have
considerable diYculty in comprehending psychological states and moti-
vation (Happe ́, 1994).
The second point which needs to be made is that whether we should
expect toWnd a cognitive impairment such asmind-blindnessdepends upon
the actual causal processes involved in generating the impairment. In
general where an impairment results from incidents causing some sort of
neural damage, the likelihood is that the extent of the damage will not be
conWned to the boundaries of a module or to neural circuitry with a
particular functional role. So it is not particularly surprising that autistic
children suVer from a range of deWcits varying in extent and severity.
In addition to contrasting the autistic child with the normally develop-
ing child, we can also learn something by comparing autism with other
98 Mind-reading