Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are said to
have deficits in “theory of mind.” The present paper explores
two main accounts of the mechanisms underlying these
deficits. On one account, high-functioning adults with ASD
struggle to infer others’ mental states. On another account,
they lack an ability to integrate those mental states into a
coherent understanding of action. We tested these two
accounts by making several modifications to the Faux Pas
task—a commonly used advanced theory of mind task—
including the presentation of explicit mental state information.
Surprisingly, in contrast to previous work, individuals on the
autism spectrum exhibited both intact integration and intact
inference.