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Hypo- or hyper-mentalizing: It all depends upon what one means by “mentalizing”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2008

Robyn Langdon
Affiliation:
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia. [email protected]://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/members/[email protected]://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/members/profile.htm?memberID=203
Jon Brock
Affiliation:
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia. [email protected]://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/members/[email protected]://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/members/profile.htm?memberID=203

Abstract

By conceiving of autism and psychosis as diametrically opposite phenotypes of underactive and overactive mentalizing, respectively, Crespi & Badcock (C&B) commit themselves to a continuum view of intercorrelated mentalizing functions. This view fails to acknowledge dissociations between mentalizing functions and that psychotic people show a mixture of both hypo- and hyper-mentalizing.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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