Part I: Introduction; An introduction to the debate; Early understanding of the mind: the normal case; Social development in autism: historical and clinical perspectives; Part II: The theory-of-mind hypothesis of autism: the cognitive approach; From attention-goal psychology to belief-desire psychology: the development of a theory of mind, and its dysfunction; What autism teaches us about metarepresentation; The theory-of-mind deficit in autism: rethinking the metarepresentation theory; What language reveals about the understanding of minds in children with autism; The theory-of-mind deficit in autism: evidence from deception; Part III: The theory-of-mind hypothesis of autism: critical perspectives; The theory-of-mind and joint-attention deficits in autism; Understanding persons: the role of affect; Pretending and planning; Narrative language in autism and the theory-of-mind hypothesis: a wider perspective; Theories of mind and the problem of autism; The complexity of social behaviour in autism; The de...