Assuming that self-awareness is not a unitary phenomenon, and that one can be aware of different aspects of self at any one time, it follows that selective impairments in self-awareness can occur. This article explores the idea that autism involves a particular deficit in awareness of the ‘psychological self’, or ‘theory of own mind’. This hypothesised deficit renders individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at least as impaired at recognising their own mental states as at recognising mental states in other people. This deficit, it is argued, stands in contrast to an apparently typical awareness of the ‘physical self’ amongst people with autism. Theoretical implications of the empirical evidence are discussed.
Amsterdam, B. ( 1972) ‘Mirror Self-Image Reactions before Age Two’ , Developmental Psychobiology5: 297-305.
2.
Baron-Cohen, S. ( 1991) ‘The Development of a Theory of Mind in Autism: Deviance and Delay’, Psychiatric Clinics of North America14(1): 33-51.
3.
Baron-Cohen, S. ( 1992) ‘Out of Sight or Out of Mind: Another Look at Deception in Autism’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry33(7): 1141-1155.
4.
Baron-Cohen, S. & Goodhart, F. ( 1994) The ‘Seeing-Leads-to-Knowing’ Deficit in Autism: The Pratt and Bryant Probe’, British Journal of Developmental Psychology12: 397-401.
5.
Bloom, P. & German, T.P. ( 2000) ‘Two Reasons to Abandon the False Belief Task as a Test of Theory of Mind. Cognition77: 25-31.
6.
Bowler, D.M., Gaigg, S. & Lind, S. (in press) ‘Memory in Autism: Binding, Self and Brain’, in I. Roth & P. Rezaie (eds) The Autistic Spectrum: Research Reviews . Milton Keyes: Open University Press.
7.
Bowler, D.M., Gardiner, J.M. & Gaigg, S.B. ( 2007) ‘Factors Affecting Conscious Awareness in the Recollective Experience of Adults with Asperger’s Syndrome’, Consciousness and Cognition16: 124-143.
8.
Bremner, A.J. & Mareschal, D. ( 2004) ‘Reasoning . . . What Reasoning? ’ Developmental Science7: 419-421.
9.
Bruck, M., London, K., Landa, R. & Goodman, J. ( 2007) ‘Autobiographical Memory and Suggestibility in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder’, Development and Psychopathology19: 73-95.
10.
Bruner, J. ( 1975) ‘The Ontogenesis of Speech Acts’, Journal of Child Language2: 1-19.
11.
Carruthers, P. ( 2009) ‘How We Know Our Own Minds: The Relationship between Mindreading and Metacognition’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences32: 1-18.
12.
David, N., Gawronski, A., Santos, N.S., Huff, W., Lehnardt, F., Newen, A. & Vogeley, K. ( 2008) ‘Dissociation between Key Processes of Social Cognition in Autism: Impaired Mentalizing but Intact Sense of Agency’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders38: 593-605.
13.
Dawson, G. & McKissick, F.C. ( 1984) ‘Self-Recognition in Autistic Children’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders14: 383-394.
14.
Ferrari, M. & Matthews, W.S. ( 1983) ‘Self-Recognition Deficits in Autism: Syndrome-Specific or General Developmental Delay?’ Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders13: 317-324.
15.
Fisher, N., Happé, F. & Dunn, J. ( 2005) ‘The Relationship between Vocabulary, Grammar, and False Belief Task Performance in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders and Children with Moderate Learning Difficulties’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry46: 409-419.
16.
Flavell, J.H., Green, F.L., Flavell, E.R. & Grosmann, J.B. ( 1997) ‘The Development of Children’s Knowledge about Inner Speech’, Child Development68: 39-47.
17.
Frith, U. ( 2003) Autism: Explaining the Enigma (2nd ed). Oxford: Blackwell.
18.
Frith, U. & Happé, F. ( 1999) ‘Theory of Mind and Self-Consciousness: What Is It Like to Be Autistic?’ Mind and Language14: 1-22.
19.
Frith, U. & Hermelin, B. ( 1969) ‘The Role of Visual and Motor Cues for Normal, Subnormal and Autistic Children’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry10: 153-163.
20.
Gallup, G.G. ( 1982) ‘Self-Awareness and the Emergence of Mind in Primates’ , American Journal of Primatology2(3): 237-248.
21.
Gillihan, S.J. & Farah, M.J. ( 2005) ‘Is Self Special? A Critical Review of Evidence from Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience’, Psychological Bulletin131: 76-97.
22.
Goldman, A. ( 2006) Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23.
Gopnik, A. ( 1993) ‘How We Know Our Minds - The Illusion of First-Person Knowledge of Intentionality’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences16(1): 1-14.
24.
Happé, F.G.E. ( 1991) ‘The Autobiographical Writings of Three Asperger Syndrome Adults: Problems of Interpretation and Implications for Theory’ , in U. Frith (ed) Autism and Asperger Syndrome (pp. 207-242). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
25.
Happé, F.G.E. & Frith, U. ( 2006) ‘The Weak Coherence Account: Detail-Focused Cognitive Style in Autism Spectrum Disorders’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders36: 5-25.
26.
Hermelin, B. & O’Connor, N. ( 1975) ‘Location and Distance Estimates by Blind and Sighted Children’, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology27: 295-301.
27.
Hermelin, B. & O’Connor, N. ( 1985) ‘Logico-Affective States and Nonverbal Language’ , in E. Schopler & G. Mesibov (eds) Communication Problems in Autism (pp. 283-310). New York: Plenum Press.
28.
Hobson, R.P. ( 1990) ‘On the Origins of Self and the Case of Autism’ , Development and Psychopathology2: 163-181.
29.
Hogrefe, G.J., Wimmer, H. & Perner, J. ( 1986) ‘Ignorance Versus False Belief: A Developmental Lag in Attribution of Epistemic States’, Child Development57: 567-582.
30.
Hurlburt, R.T. ( 1990) Sampling Normal and Schizophrenic Inner Experience. New York: Plenum Press.
31.
Hurlburt, R.T., Happé, F. & Frith, U. ( 1994) ‘Sampling the Form of Inner Experience in Three Adults with Asperger Syndrome’, Psychological Medicine24: 385-395.
32.
Joseph, R.M., Steele, S.D., Meyer, E. & Tager-Flusberg, H. ( 2005) ‘Self-Ordered Pointing in Children with Autism: Failure to Use Verbal Mediation in the Service of Working Memory? ’ Neuropsychologia43: 1400-1411.
33.
Just, M.A., Cherkassy, V.L., Keller, T.A. & Minshew, N.J. ( 2004) ‘Cortical Activation and Synchronization during Sentence Comprehension in High-Functioning Autism: Evidence of Underconnectivity’ , Brain127: 1811-1821.
34.
Kazak, S., Collis, G.M. & Lewis, V. ( 1997) ‘Can Young People with Autism Refer to Knowledge States? Evidence from Their Understanding of "Know" and "Guess"’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry38: 1001-1009.
35.
Lang, B. & Perner, J. ( 2002) ‘Understanding of Intention and False Belief and the Development of Self-Control’, British Journal of Developmental Psychology20: 67-76.
36.
Lee, A. & Hobson, R.P. ( 1998) ‘On Developing Self-Concepts: A Controlled Study of Children and Adolescents with Autism’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry39: 1131-1144.
37.
Leslie, A.M. ( 1987) ‘Pretense and Representation: The Origins of "Theory of Mind"’, Psychological Review94: 412-426.
38.
Leslie, A.M. & Thaiss, L. ( 1992) ‘Domain Specificity in Conceptual Development: Neuropsychological Evidence from Autism’, Cognition43: 225-251.
39.
Lewis, M. ( 2003) ‘The Development of Self-Consciousness’, in J. Roessler and N. Eilan (ed) Agency and Self-Awareness (pp. 275-295). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
40.
Lewis, M. & Brooks-Gunn, J. ( 1979) Social Cognition and the Acquisition of Self. New York: Plenum.
41.
Lewis, M. & Ramsey, D. ( 2004) ‘Development of Self-Recognition, Personal Pronoun Use, and Pretend Play during the 2nd Year’, Child Development75: 1821-1831.
42.
Lidstone, J.S.M., Fernyhough, C., Meins, E. & Whitehouse, A.J.O. (in press) ‘Inner Speech Impairment in Autism is Associated with Greater Nonverbal than Verbal Skills’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
43.
Lind, S.E. & Bowler, D.M. ( 2009a) ‘Recognition Memory, Self-Other Source Memory, and Theory-Of-Mind in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders39: 1231-1239.
44.
Lind, S.E. & Bowler, D.M.(2009b) ‘Delayed Self-Recognition in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder’ , Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders39: 643-650.
45.
Lind, S.E. & Bowler, D.M. ( 2010) ‘Impaired Performance on See-Know Tasks amongst Children with Autism: Evidence of Specific Difficulties with Theory of Mind or Domain-General Task Factors?’Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1007/s10803-009-0889-y
46.
Loveland, K.A. ( 1993) ‘Autism, Affordances, and the Self’, in U. Neisser (ed) The Perceived Self: Ecological and Interpersonal Sources of Self-Knowledge (pp. 237-253). New York: Cambridge University Press.
47.
Lyons, V. & Fitzgerald, M. ( 2005) ‘Early Memory and Autism’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders35: 683.
48.
McGeer, V. ( 2004) ‘Autistic Self-Awareness’, Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology11: 235-251.
49.
Neisser, U. ( 1988) ‘Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge’, Philosophical Psychology1: 35-59.
50.
Neuman, C.J. & Hill, S.D. ( 1978) ‘Self-Recognition and Stimulus Preference in Autistic Children’, Developmental Psychobiology11: 571-578.
51.
Nichols, S. & Stich, S. ( 2003) Mindreading: An Integrated Account of Pretence, Self-Awareness, and Understanding Other Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
52.
Nielsen, M., Suddendorf, T. & Dissanayake, C. ( 2006) ‘Imitation and Self-Recognition in Autism’ , in S. Rogers & J.W. Williams (eds) Imitation and the Development of the Social Mind: Autism and Typical Development (pp. 138-156). New York: Guilford Press.
53.
Perner, J. ( 1991) Understanding the Representational Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
54.
Perner, J. ( 2000) ‘Memory and Theory of Mind’, in E. Tulving & F.I.M. Craik (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Memory (pp. 297-312). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
55.
Perner, J., Frith, U., Leslie, A.M. & Leekam, S.R. ( 1989) ‘Explorations of the Autistic Child’s Theory of Mind: Knowledge, Belief, and Communication. Child Development60: 689-700.
56.
Perner, J. & Ruffman, T. ( 2005) ‘Infants’ Insight into the Mind: How Deep ?’ Science308: 214-216.
57.
Phillips, W., Baron-Cohen, S. & Rutter, M. ( 1998) ‘Understanding Intention in Normal Development and Autism’, British Journal of Developmental Psychology16: 337-348.
58.
Povinelli, D.J., Landau, K.R. & Perilloux, H.K. ( 1996) ‘Self-Recognition in Young Children Using Delayed versus Live Feedback: Evidence of a Developmental Asynchrony’, Child Development67: 1540-1554.
59.
Povinelli, D.J. & Vonk, J. ( 2004) ‘Do We Really Need a Microscope to Explore the Chimpanzee’s Mind?’ Mind & Language19: 1-28.
60.
Premack, D. & Woodruff, G. ( 1978) ‘Does the Chimpanzee Have a Theory of Mind? ’ Behavioural and Brain Sciences4: 515-526.
61.
Raffman, D. ( 1999) ‘What Autism May Tell Us about Self-Awareness: A Commentary on Frith and Happé’, Mind & Language14(1): 23-31.
62.
Rochat, P. ( 2003) ‘Five Levels of Self-Awareness as They Unfold Early in Life’, Consciousness and Cognition12: 717-731.
63.
Russell, J. ( 1996) Agency: Its Role in Mental Development. Hove, UK: Erlbaum, Taylor and Francis.
64.
Russell, J. & Hill, E.L. ( 2001) ‘Action Monitoring and Intention Reporting in Children with Autism’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry42: 317-328.
65.
Schacter, D.L. & Tulving, E. ( 1994) ‘What Are the Memory Systems of 1994?’ in D.L. Schacter & E. Tulving (eds) Memory Systems 1994 (pp. 1-38). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
66.
Spiker, D. & Ricks, M. ( 1984) ‘Visual Self-Recognition in Autistic Children: Developmental Relationships’, Child Development55: 214-225.
67.
Suddendorf, T. ( 1999) ‘Children’s Understanding of the Relation between Delayed Video Representation and Current Reality: A Test for Self-Awareness ?’ Journal of Experimental Child Psychology72: 157-176.
68.
Vygotsky, L.S. ( 1987) Thinking and Speech.The Collected Works of Lev Vygotsky (Vol. I). New York: Plenum (Original work published in 1934).
69.
Wellman, H., Cross, D. & Watson, J. ( 2001) ‘Meta-Analysis of Theory of Mind Development: The Truth about False Belief’, Child Development72: 655-684.
70.
Whitehouse, A.J.O., Maybery, M.T. & Durkin, K. ( 2006) ‘Inner Speech Impairments in Autism’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry47: 857-866.
71.
Williams, D.M.& Happé, F. (2009a) ‘What Did I Say? versus What Did I Think? Attributing False Beliefs to Self amongst Children with and without Autism’ , Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders39: 865-873.
72.
Williams, D.M. & Happé, F.(2009b) ‘Pre-Conceptual Aspects of Self-Awareness in Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Case of Action-Monitoring’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders39: 251-259.
73.
Williams, D.M. & Happé, F. ( 2010) ‘Representing Intentions in Self and Others: Studies of Autism and Typical Development’, Developmental Science13: 307-319. Williams , D., Happé, F. & Jarrold, C. ( 2008) ‘Intact Inner Speech in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Evidence from a Short-Term Memory Task’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry48: 51-58.
74.
Winsler, A., Abar, B., Feder, M.A., Schunn, C.D. & Rubio, D.A. ( 2007) ‘Private Speech and Executive Functioning among High-Functioning Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders37: 1617-1635.
75.
Wolpert, D.M., Ghahramani, Z. & Jordan, M.I. ( 1995) ‘An Internal Model for Sensorimotor Integration’ , Science269: 1880-1882.
76.
Zelazo, P.D., Sommerville, J.A. & Nichols, S. ( 1999) ‘Age-Related Changes in Children’s Use of External Representations’, Developmental Psychology35: 1059-1071.
