> [10] Doesn't seem to support the idea that the mirror system is at all involved in ToM. It may cite other papers, but the conclusions are not in support of that concept.

Well, like I said it's a quickly growing field...[8] is a review from 2001 early on in the discovery of mirror neurons (although I know at some point or another their existence was disputed...not sure if that's still happening) and contains a lot of conjecture, [10] is a meta-analysis from 2009. I would say [10] is correct, so MNS may even be a red herring in the conversation on ToM.

However, if you're responding to confusion over this statement:

> One such paper that is fairly highly cited is [10], which compensates for issues presented by [3] by looking at a different area of the brain.

I believe the paper I attempted to cite here was in fact [11], which is also one of your citations, [5]. In it's discussion it asserts that the area of the brain relevant to the paper is "functionally and spatially dissociable from nearby dorsal clusters which respond to attentional reorienting", citing [3].

>I didn't rule this out. However, from the evidence we have, there isn't enough to rule it in, either.

I absolutely agree...but you asserted [2] and [5] 'suggested we simply aren't measuring it correctly', which they don't. I just wanted to clarify this wasn't the case. [7] suggests that, but absolutely not [2] or [5].

>Further, the result that people with ASD have a mirror system deficit hasn't always been reproduced. [0]

What you're saying is true, but this review doesn't support the assertion that people with ASD do not have a ToM deficit. It brings up two theoretical explanations for why people with ASD 'have difficulty understanding goals and intentions of others', and shows that evidence towards one of the theories, the 'broken mirror theory' is shaky at best and evidence is leaning against the broken mirror theory at worst.

There are three questions here which are being muddied together:

1. Does the MNS have a role in development of ToM?

2. Do people with ASD have a deficient MSN?

3. Do people with autism have a ToM deficit?

The answer to 1 appears to be, we do not know, however as the mentalizing/ToM system can act independently to the MNS, this may not be material to question 3.

The answer to 2 appears to be, it's as of yet inconclusive, and the review you posted seems to assert evidence is mounting to the contrary.

As for question 3...all current measures seems to point towards 'yes' [13], however, all current measures are also disputed as to whether or not they are accurately measuring ToM [14]. The method discussed in [7], is actually not the only method used to study ToM in people with ASD. It is an explicit (verbal) method (such as those referenced in [0] of the parent comment), and 'implicit' (visual) methods followed which used eye tracking (it is not yet clear whether these tests measure different things or the verbal tests are simply ineffective). These methods found impaired mentalizing in people with ASD [15]. More recently, more methods have arisen [14]. Here is one of the linked studies with an interesting discussion [16].

So, frankly it wouldn't be correct in my eyes to say it's certain in any way that people with ASD have a ToM deficit...but at the very least progress and improvements in methodology don't seem to have yet cast significant doubt on conclusions reached by previous research in this topic.

Unfortunately I'm unable to give input on your comments on p-value hacking for [12] since I don't have expertise. But at least the papers subject is on the mechanism rather than the degree to which people with ASD have a ToM deficit, so it doesn't affect the overall discussion too much.

[13] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23686020?dopt=Abstract

[14] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-018-3823-3

[15] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.0169...

[16] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5487761/