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The theory of the double empathy problem is a psychological and sociological theory first coined in 2012 by Damian Milton, an autistic autism researcher. This theory proposes that many of the difficulties autistic individuals face when socializing with non-autistic individuals are due, in part, to a lack of mutual understanding between the two groups, meaning that most autistic people struggle to understand and empathize with non-autistic people, whereas most non-autistic people also struggle to understand and empathize with autistic people. This lack of understanding may stem from bidirectional differences in communication style, social-cognitive characteristics, and experiences between autistic and non-autistic individuals, but not necessarily an inherent deficiency. Recent studies have shown that most autistic individuals are able to socialize, communicate effectively, empathize well, and display social reciprocity with most other autistic individuals. This theory and subsequent findings challenge the commonly held belief that the social skills of autistic individuals are inherently impaired, as well as the theory of "mind-blindness" proposed by prominent autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen in the mid-1980s, which suggested that empathy and theory of mind are universally impaired in autistic individuals. The double empathy concept has been consistently supported by a substantial number of studies in recent years and has the potential to radically shift goals of interventions and public psychoeducation regarding autism. In recognition of recent findings that support the theory, Baron-Cohen positively recognized the theory of the double empathy problem in two research articles in 2018 and 2022, as well as in multiple podcasts since 2020. History Development and spread of mind-blindness theory Earlier studies on autism regarding theory of mind and empathy had concluded that a lack of theory of mind was one of the primary symptoms of autism. The most popular of these studies were those led by Simon Baron-Cohen in the 1980s and 1990s, who used the term "mind-blindness" to describe his theory in an attempt to empirically explain the tendency of autistic people to avoid eye contact, proposing a homogeneous explanation of autism as due to either a lack of theory of mind or developmental delay in theory of mind in early childhood. Some have additionally described the supposed social impairment present in autistic people as "an extreme form of egocentrism with the resulting lack of consideration for others". Mind-blindness implies an inability to make sense of and predict another person's behavior, and to attribute mental states such as knowledge, beliefs, desires, emotions, and intentions to oneself and others. The claim that autistic people lack theory of mind is taught across a wide range of psychology textbooks and promoted by over 75% of the top 500 scholarly articles indexed for "theory of mind" and "autism" on Google Scholar, serving as one of psychology's widely promoted topics throughout psychological literature, practice, and instruction. Mind-blindness has also been embraced by scholars in other disciplinary areas such as sociology, philosophy, economics, anthropology, robotics, and narratology. Problems with earlier studies on theory of mind and empathy in autism The mind-blindness hypothesis, in addition to being questioned shortly after its publication, has faced a great deal of criticism from the scientific community over the years, in response to the replication studies (mostly with false-belief tasks) that have failed to reveal significant differences in theory of mind between autistic and non-autistic participants, as well as the growing body of evidence for the high degree of heterogeneity in autistic brains at a neurobiological level. There have been developments of new theory-of-mind measures when existing measures were perceived by some researchers as inadequate. There have been some successful replications demonstrating differences in theory of mind and empathy with some measures such as the Frith–Happé Animations Test, Baron-Cohen's "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" task, and self-report empathy questionnaires — which have been criticized for being vague and imprecise as well as not considering social interaction contexts, reference groups, and the substantially lowered social-desirability bias of autistic individuals. In addition, several independent teams have repetitively failed to replicate highly cited and widely taught findings with picture-sequencing tasks and false-belief tasks such as the Sally–Anne test. Such mixed and inconsistent findings with many different measures have raised doubts regarding the generalizability and validity of the mind-blindness theory of autism. Furthermore, autism intervention research based on theory of mind has shown little efficacy, and theory-of-mind experiments typically fail to take into account the fact that autistic people have different sensory experiences, which vary between autistic individuals, than non-autistic people. Academics have also noted that many autistic children and adults pass some theory-of-mind tasks but performances vary substantially between diverse tasks and between autistic individuals; hence, Baron-Cohen's earlier repeated assertion of mind-blindness being a universal characteristic of autism across contexts has also been called into question by other researchers since the 1990s. In recent years, Baron-Cohen has revised his understanding and his recent well-powered studies have found substantial heterogeneity in empathy and theory of mind among autistic people, with lower performances or scores in theory-of-mind and empathy tasks among autistic people on average, but also a substantial proportion (around 40–60%) of autistic people showing "unimpaired" or even above-average performances in some rather controversial theory-of-mind and empathy measures. Similar results have been consistently demonstrated by other research teams. Additionally, it has been argued that many professionals and, likewise, parents seem to have neglected that reciprocity needs to be mutual and symmetrical. For example, John Constantino's Social Responsiveness Scale, a 2002 quantitative measure of social reciprocity in children which has since been used extensively in autism research, consisted of the item that asks whether the child "is regarded by other children as odd or weird", which, although seems to indicate a lack of social or emotional reciprocity in the regarder, is used instead to indicate a lack of social or emotional reciprocity in the target child. Several other items in the questionnaire, such as the one that asks whether the child "is not well coordinated in physical activities", seem completely unrelated to reciprocity. Counter-theory to mind-blindness Around the early 2010s, academics began to suggest that some studies of theory-of-mind and empathy tests may have misinterpreted autistic peopl.... Discover the Todd Brabander popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Todd Brabander books.