How Comparisons with Down Syndrome Have Changed Premack and Woodruff's seminal study in 1978 introduced the concept of theory of mind...

Theory of mind (ToM), or mentalising, is a fundamental aspect of human cognition. It is defined as the ability to attribute mental states—

Art activities have shown to be highly beneficial for autistic individuals (Vrisaba et al. 2021) because art offers a unique medium...

Alexithymia is considered a “sub-clinical phenomenon” (Silani et al. 2008) and doesn’t identify a personality disorder  per se  but is a personality trait that is dimensional in nature (Taylor et al. 1991). Alexithymia is not a symptom of autism, but rather an independent construct that frequently co-occurs with autism. Although alexithymia has similar symptoms , it is distinct from autism – it is neither a necessary nor sufficient feature for an autism diagnosis, and there a

The connection between alexithymia and ASD was initially explored in the 1990s through clinical studies on individuals with eating disorders, specifically anorexia nervosa (AN).   The studies revealed the co-occurrence of eating disorders with deficiencies in social competence and identified some traits that were considered typical of ASD, [ 1 ]   such as empathy problems, as well as some features considered typical of alexithymia, such as difficulty verbalising emotions, ide

The growing evidence suggests that alexithymia is a heterogeneous  and dimensional phenomenon. Alexithymia Subtypes Several studies have identified alexithymia subtypes. Here are some of the most recent ones: Lane et al. (2015) distinguished anomic (problems naming  emotions but intact theory of mind) and agnostic (problems forming conceptual representations  of emotions and impaired theory of mind) forms. Kajanoja et al. (2017) compared depressive and anxiety symptoms, se

The term “alexithymia” was coined by psychotherapist Peter Sifneos (1973) to describe a relative constriction in emotional functioning, poverty of fantasy life and inability to find appropriate words to describe their emotions. For lack of a more suitable term, he called these characteristics ‘alexithymic’[ 1 ]. Since that time research investigating the alexithymia construct has considerably broadened: Alexithymia  is a multifaceted personality trait characterised by difficu

‘Autistic individuals always say what they think / or what they want to say’ There is a common misconception that autistic individuals...

Imitation as a Social Tool in Autism Though the broken mirror hypothesis  predicts that autistic individuals should show severe...