Twenty-two children (5-12 year old) who were profoundly, prelingually deaf were given two tests designed to tap their 'theory of mind', that is, their ability to attribute independent mental states to other people. The tests were versions of Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith's Sally-Anne task and of Baron-Cohen's breakfast task. Seventy percent of the children were successful on all questions requiring belief attribution, a considerably and significantly larger percentage than the 29% obtained by Peterson and Siegal for a similar sample, though it is still lower than would be expected on the basis on chronological age. Children were universally successful on questions requiring the attribution of desire. We discuss implications of the findings.
Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians is a fraught topic, presenting legal as well as moral challenges, and involves a large set of issues beyond my scope here. I want to explore in this chapter the problem of how to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, a matter given much thought by the members of the Expert Panel appointed by Prime Minister Gillard in December 2010. Upon the release of the Expert Panel Report in January 2012, some commentators made extraordinary and mistaken claims about its recommendations and findings. One person contended that Aboriginal child bride practices would be legalised, should the government accept these recommendations. Another claim was that it was a racist attack on Australians. None of this is the case, of course, but the hysterical response to the propositions of the Expert Panel, well founded in constitutional law and history, tells us something. Most Australians know very little about our Constitution; few have read it, and even fewer understand it. The main challenge for those who agree with our findings is the poorly understood friction between bringing Indigenous Australians firmly into the national polity, and maintaining their exceptionalist status as inexorably different. I hope to suggest a solution to this dilemma; it is not original,
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