Studies debunking lack of theory of mind in autistics

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Agreed.

I have never understood this TOM stuff. I’ve known many people with autism and have yet to see this impairment evidenced. You don’t have to do a study. You can just watch it going on in daily interactions.

Most NTs lack a "theory of autistic mind", how about they study that more

I certainly have a deficit of TOM. And in very much the typical way: black and white thinking, not understanding intention, not getting emotional rewards, etc.

Hi, I've just come from a Zoom call with my supervisor on this exact topic. A few points that haven't been mentioned - the last time I saw something that claimed that autistic people don't have ToM was from the 1980s. There are many theories of theory of mind(!) and even more ways to test something that we don't agree exists. However, there is plenty of evidence that autistic kids perform worse on measures of ToM than NT kids, like PLENTY. It's not proof of anything but it is huge amounts of evidence for a difference in ToM.

It is quite possible that ToM can be learned, faked, compensated for etc... but ToM hasn't been debunked or proved because that's not what science does.

I wouldn't know I'm autistic if I hadn't learned that other people have this implicit ability that I have to work hard to replicate.

^^ This.

It was a problem of a TOM that led me to get diagnosed.

Science is messy. Autism is complex. People are different. That makes evaluating information very difficult.