The enactive mind, or from actions to cognition: lessons from autism.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci February 1, 2003 Ami Klin, Warren Jones, Robert Schultz et al. 881 citations
People with autism and normal IQs can solve explicit social cognitive problems but struggle in real-world social situations. Eye-tracking studies reveal how they search for meaning in natural social scenes. This paper introduces the enactive mind (EM) approach, rooted in embodied cognitive science, which views cognition as arising from bodily interactions with the environment. The EM approach proposes that autism involves an early derailment of embodied social cognition due to reduced salience of social stimuli, leading to attention to socially irrelevant environmental aspects. This hypothesis aims to explain the gap between explicit social reasoning and everyday social functioning.