Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2008 - Volume 31, Issue 03  

Open Peer Commentary

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

Robyn Langdona1 and Jon Brocka1

a1 Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia. rlangdon@maccs.mq.edu.au http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/members/profile.htm?memberID=60 jbrock@maccs.mq.edu.au http://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.