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Abstract
In the literature, there are few and conflicting reports regarding age-related changes in adult mentalizing abilities: whereas Happè et al. (1998, Developmental Psychology, 34, 358–362) showed better performances of elderly compared with young subjects in an advanced theory of mind (ToM) task, Mayor et al. (2002, British Journal of Psychology, 93, 465–485) and Sullivan and Ruffmann (2004, British Journal of Psychology, 95(Pt 1), 1–18) found an age-related decline. Former studies addressing the issue compared young to elderly subjects and did not investigate earlier changes in middle-aged adults. To shed light on changes in ToM skills along adulthood, the authors used the revised version of the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test” (Baron-Cohen et al., Citation2001, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 241–251) to compare four groups of people of different ages covering the whole span of adult life. The authors found aged-related decline in ToM skills as early as the fifth decade of life. Awareness of the age-related changes in adult mentalizing is important to differentiate normal aging effects from ToM impairments due to neuropsychiatric diseases.