How Easy is it to Read the Minds of People with Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Observers were worse at reading what autistic people were reacting to, even though autistic people were rated just as expressive.

Sheppard, E., Pillai, D., Wong, G. T.-L., Ropar, D. & Mitchell, P. (2016). How Easy is it to Read the Minds of People with Autism Spectrum Disorder? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(4), 1247–1254.

Type

Journal article

Find it

doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2662-8

Checked

Against the abstract, 15 September 2026

Why it is on the list

Neurotypical participants watched people react to events and guessed which event they had experienced. They were less accurate for autistic targets. Yet autistic targets were rated equally expressive for most events, and their reactions were described differently. Different, not less: the difficulty of reading someone runs in both directions.