Highly intelligent adults with Asperger’s Syndrome have difficulties withday-to-day social interaction. These difficulties have been explained by theterm ‘mindblindness’. This means an inability to explain and predict otherpeople’s behaviour on the basis of their psychological motives.

The 'mindblindness' theory was first proposed in 1985 by a team of UCLresearchers and has now been widely accepted. However, one problem with thetheory has since remained. Adults with Asperger's Syndrome pass all thetests of mindblindness. If their social difficulties, which are similar tothose of autistic children, have to be explained in a different way, thenthe mindblindness theory would lose much of its power. A new study led byUta Frith, (UCL Institute of Neuroscience) and Atsushi Senju of BirkbeckCollege London published in Science, has now provided an answer to thisconundrum.