The enactive mind, or from actions to cognition: lessons from autism.

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Normative-IQ individuals with autism are capable of solving explicit social cognitive problems at a level that is not matched by their ability to meet the demands of everyday social situations. The magnitude of this discrepancy is now being documented through newer techniques such as eye tracking, which allows us to see and measure how individuals with autism search for meaning when presented with naturalistic social scenes. This paper offers an approach to social cognitive development intended to address the above discrepancy, which is considered a key element for any understanding of the pathophysiology of autism. This approach, called the enactive mind (EM), originates from the emerging work on 'embodied cognitive science', a neuroscience framework that views cognition as bodily experiences accrued as a result of an organism's adaptive actions upon salient aspects of the surrounding environment. The EM approach offers a developmental hypothesis of autism in which the process of acquisition of embodied social cognition is derailed early on, as a result of reduced salience of social stimuli and concomitant enactment of socially irrelevant aspects of the environment.