Abstract

Rutherford and Ray think that human beings have mental mechanisms that help them to detect individuals that, deliberately, do not follow a rule. In the same way, they hold that autism is not a disorder in which these mechanisms are damaged. This idea seems contrary to the thesis, supported by some researchers, that autistic people have a theory of mind deficit. This is because of, if Rutherford and Ray are right, autistic people can detect other people’s intentions. In this paper, Rutherford and Ray’s experiment is analyzed and it is concluded that they do not prove that people with autism can understand intentions. Such an experiment only shows that autistic people and general population share common logical-linguistic abilities