Do autistic people have degrees of disability in ‘theory of mind’?  The importance of meta-analytic convergence Commentary on LaCroix, T. (2026). Autism and the pseudoscience of mind. Psychological Inquiry

We are pleased to be invited to comment on the article by Travis LaCroix regarding theory of mind (ToM) in autism. We make one key point: LaCroix’ claim that the hypothesis of ToM disability in autism should be rejected ignores converging evidence from a staggering number of meta-analyses. We argue that an impartial reading of the meta-analytic literature, covering empirical evidence from over 40 years of painstaking research, leads to the following conclusion: on average, autistic people compared to the general population have degrees of disability in ToM.

Journal Title

Psychological Inquiry

Journal ISSN

1047-840X
1532-7965

Publisher

Routledge

Rights and licensing

Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Sponsorship

SBC received funding from the Wellcome Trust 214322\Z\18\Z. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. SBC also received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 777394 for the project AIMS-2-TRIALS. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA and AUTISM SPEAKS, Autistica, SFARI. SBC also received funding from Autism Action, SFARI, the Templeton World Charitable Fund and the MRC. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results. Any views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the funders (including IHI-JU2). MAR is supported by the Autism Research Trust Fund. All research at the Department of Psychiatry in the University of Cambridge is supported by the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR203312) and the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration East of England. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care

Collections

University of Cambridge Research Outputs (Articles and Conferences)