The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	Social brain and autism: Mindblindness, broken mirror and gaze avoidance
Language	J
AuthorList	Atsushi Senju
Affiliation	Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 26 (2), 118-127, 2010
Received
Accepted
Abstract	The current paper reviewed three theories on the cognitive and neural basis of autism, the mindblindness theory, the broken mirror theory and the gaze avoidance theory, which have been inspired by the social brain researches. For each theory, its background and the implications from experimental studies has been summarized. For the mindblindness theory, a series of recent studies was highlighted, which demonstrated that high-functioning adults with autism fail to spontaneously anticipate others' behaviour based on her false belief even though they can easily pass false belief task when instructed to do so. For the broken mirror theory, recent studies has suggested that the impairment of imitation in autism may not be based on the impaired mirror neurons but is related to the impairment in the planning of complex actions or impairment in the spontaneous attention to others' action. For the gaze avoidance theory, our recent review article has suggested that individuals with autism do not always avoid eye contact. Even though they sometimes show heightened non-specific arousal in response to direct gaze, their behaviour could be best characterized as the lack of selective facilitation of response to direct gaze. These studies from different topics of social brain research in autism may consistently suggest the critical contribution of atypical social attention and/or social motivation, which hampers spontaneous and adaptive use of social cognition in daily environment.
Keywords	autism, social cognition, theory of mind, imitation, gaze processing