ABSTRACT
The pioneering work of Bernard Rimland in the 1960s both ushered in the dismantling of the psychodynamic theory of autism and made a strong case for viewing it as a biological disorder. The most dramatic statements regarding the nature of autism have come out of the National Institutes of Health. The July 1995 Preliminary Report of the Autism Working Group to the National Institutes of Health documents “clear evidence of functional and structural abnormalities in several brain regions in persons with autism”. Research into the phenomenon of theory of mind provides additional insight and a somewhat different interpretation of the factors involved in understanding that other people may view the world from different reference points. The field of infant research has provided fertile ground for understanding the ways in which children with autism differ from their normally developing peers, particularly with respect to sociocommunicative development and symbolic play.
