ReviewAutism : the international journal of research and practice2021
Do animated triangles reveal a marked difficulty among autistic people with reading minds?
Review in Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Spontaneous mentalizing in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders: a meta-analysis.Psychological medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Examining whether adults with autism spectrum disorder encounter multiple problems in theory of mind: a study based on meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2023Pooled it
- Developmental trajectories of social responsiveness and theory of mind in adolescent offspring at familial high-risk of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and population-based controls-The Danish High Risk and Resilience Study, VIA 15.The British journal of clinical psychology · 2026Article
- Atypical Resting-State EEG Graph Metrics of Network Efficiency Across Development in Autism and Their Association with Social Cognition: Results from the LEAP Study.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Mentalizing difficulties are transdiagnostic and explain links between mental health and neurodevelopmental symptoms and social adjustment in school-aged children.JCPP advances · 2026Article
- Self-Bias and Self-Related Mentalizing are Unaltered in Adolescents with Autism.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Windows to the Social Mind: What Eye-Tracking Reveals About Theory of Mind in Children and Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Associations between pragmatic language and Theory of Mind in individuals with a history of autism and those who have lost the autism diagnosis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A cross-cultural examination of bi-directional mentalising in autistic and non-autistic adults.Molecular autism · 2025Article
- The Impact of Affective Theory of Mind on Autistic Individual's Perception of Remorse.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Article
- Influences of heart rate feedback and autistic traits on affective mindreading.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- No association between alexithymia and emotion recognition or theory of mind in a sample of adolescents enhanced for autistic traits.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2024Article
- The Social Shapes Test as a Self-Administered, Online Measure of Social Intelligence: Two Studies with Typically Developing Adults and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2024Article
- Autistic adults' inclination to lie in everyday situations.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2024Article
- Development of social responsiveness and theory of mind in children of parents with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.Schizophrenia research. Cognition · 2022Article
- Using game-like animations of geometric shapes to simulate social interactions: An evaluation of group score differences.International journal of selection and assessment · 2022Article
- A psychometric investigation of the multiple-choice version of Animated Triangles Task to measure Theory of Mind in adolescence.PloS one · 2022Article
- Judging meaning: A domain-level difference between autistic and non-autistic adults.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
lay abstractAutistic people are thought to have difficulty with mentalising (our drive to track and understand the minds of other people). Mentalising is often measured by the Frith-Happé Animations task, where individuals need to interpret the interactions of abstract shapes. This review article collated results from over 3000 people to assess how autistic people performed on the task. Analysis showed that autistic people tended to underperform compared to non-autistic people on the task, although the scale of the difference was moderate rather than large. Also, autistic people showed some difficulty with the non-mentalising as well as mentalising aspects of the task. These results raise questions about the scale and specificity of mentalising difficulties in autism. It also remains unclear how well mentalising difficulties account for the social challenges diagnostic of autism.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.