We report an event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment that tests whether autistic adults are able to maintain and switch between counterfactual and factual worlds. Participants (N = 48) read scenarios that set up a factual or counterfactual scenario, then either maintained the counterfactual world or switched back to the factual world. When…

According to current accounts of social cognition, the emergence of verbal and non-verbal components of social perception might rely on the acquisition of different cognitive abilities. These components might be differently sensitive to the pattern of neuropsychological impairments in congenital neurodevelopmental disorders. Here, we explored the…

The mechanisms that support infant action processing are thought to be involved in the development of later social cognition. While a growing body of research demonstrates longitudinal links between action processing and explicit theory of mind (TOM), it remains unclear why this link emerges in some measures of action encoding and not others. In…

Older interlocutors are more likely than younger ones to make pragmatic inferences, that is, inferences that go beyond the linguistically encoded meaning of a sentence. Here we ask whether pragmatic development is associated with increased activity in brain structures associated with inference-making or in those associated with Theory of Mind. We…

Background: Social communication problems are common in adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI), particularly problems in spoken discourse. Social communication problems are thought to reflect underlying cognitive impairments. Aims: To measure the contribution of two cognitive processes, executive functioning (EF) and theory of mind (ToM), to the…

Empathy describes an individual's ability to understand and feel the other. In this article, we review recent theoretical approaches to the study of empathy. Recent evidence supports 2 possible empathy systems: an emotional system and a cognitive system. These processes are served by separate, albeit interacting, brain networks. When a cognitive…

The development of fMRI techniques has generated a boom of neuroscience research across the psychological sciences, and revealed neural correlates for many psychological phenomena seen as central to the human experience (e.g., morality, agency). Meanwhile, the rise of neuroscience has reignited old debates over mind-body dualism and the soul.…

Theory of mind requires belief- "and" desire-understanding. Event-related brain potential (ERP) research on belief- and desire-reasoning in adults found mid-frontal activations for both desires and beliefs, and selective right-posterior activations "only" for beliefs. Developmentally, children understand desires before beliefs; thus, a critical…

The efficacy of a peer-mediated, theatre-based intervention on social competence in participants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was tested. Thirty 8-to-14 year-olds with ASD were randomly assigned to the treatment (n = 17) or a wait-list control (n = 13) group. Immediately after treatment, group effects were seen on social ability,…

A role for rostral prefrontal cortex (BA10) has been proposed in multitasking, in particular, the selection and maintenance of higher order internal goals while other sub-goals are being performed. BA10 has also been implicated in the ability to infer someone else's feelings and thoughts, often referred to as theory of mind. While most of the data…

Through secondary analysis of data collected in middle school science classrooms, this study (a) compared gifted and regular students' beliefs about the malleability of intelligence in science; (b) investigated whether teaching gifted and talented middle-school students about malleability of the brain and study skills helped them to develop a…

A recent paper (Zald & Andreotti, 2010) reviewed neuropsychological tasks that assess the function of the orbital and ventromedial portions of the prefrontal cortex (OMPFC). Neuropathological studies have shown that the function of the OMPFC should be preserved in the early stages of Parkinson's disease (PD) but becomes affected in the advanced…

Background: A requisite skill for successful conversation is the ability to adjust one's language according to contextual factors. Aims: This study examined one aspect of language use in context--the use of mental-state terms, i.e. words that communicate thoughts, beliefs or feelings--in conversations between adult males with and without traumatic…

Objective: Converging evidence suggests deficits in theory-of-mind (ToM) processing in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN). The present study aimed at elucidating the neural mechanisms underlying ToM-deficits in AN. Method: A total of 19 adolescent patients with AN and 21 age-matched controls were investigated using functional magnetic resonance…

Background: Hans Asperger drew attention to individuals who show the core symptoms of autism in the presence of high verbal intelligence. Methods: A review of the literature explores current issues concerning the diagnosis and nature of Asperger syndrome. Results: The behavioural and neurophysiological evidence to date suggests that Asperger…