Highly intelligent adults with Asperger’s Syndrome have difficulties with
day-to-day social interaction. These difficulties have been explained by the
term ‘mindblindness’. This means an inability to explain and predict other
people’s behaviour on the basis of their psychological motives.

The 'mindblindness' theory was first proposed in 1985 by a team of UCL
researchers and has now been widely accepted. However, one problem with the
theory has since remained. Adults with Asperger's Syndrome pass all the
tests of mindblindness. If their social difficulties, which are similar to
those of autistic children, have to be explained in a different way, then
the mindblindness theory would lose much of its power. A new study led by
Uta Frith, (UCL Institute of Neuroscience) and Atsushi Senju of Birkbeck
College London published in Science, has now provided an answer to this
conundrum.