© 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 10 THAUMÀZEIN 6, 2018 Joel Krueger & MiChelle Maiese MENTAL INSTITUTIONS, HABITS OF MIND, AND  AN EXTENDED APPROACH TO AUTISM taBle oF CoNteNtS: 1. Extended (social) cognition; 2. Mental institutions and their embodiment; 2.1. Mental institutions and habits of mind; 3. Instituting impairment: autism, embodiment, and mental institutions; 3.1. "Local" mental institutions and (neurotypical) embodiment; 3.2. ASD, embodiment, and alternative habits of mind; 4. Further implications and conclusion. Our lifeworlds are full of «mental institutions» [Gallagher   Cris-a  2009]: rich networks of norm-governed practices, artifacts, and  traditions that shape how we attend to and interact with the world and  others. But not everyone inhabits the same networks of mental institutions. For example, if the practice of law is a kind of mental institution  (more on this later), then the specialized resources available within this  institution will be unavailable to non-lawyers. Within the last few years, philosophical discussions of mental institutions have arisen in the context of debates about "extended cognition": the idea that cognition may, at times, physically extend into the  environment via the artefacts, practices, and institutions that support our intelligent behavior. But this idea has not received much attention in philosophical psychiatry.1 In what follows, we argue that the notion of  mental institutions can help better understand the origin and character of  social  impairments  in  autism,  and  also  help  illuminate  the  extent  to which some mechanisms of autistic dysfunction extend across both  internal and external factors (i.e., they do not just reside within an individual's head). First, we provide some  conceptual background. We  focus on  the  1 Although this has recently started to change. See, for example, Cooper [2017]; Davies [2016]; De Haan [forthcoming]; Fuchs [2018]; Hoffman [2016]; Krueger [2018];  Krueger   Colombetti [2018]; Maiese [2015]; Roberts et al. [forthcoming]; Sprevak  [2011]. © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 11 connection between mental institutions and embodied habits of mind.  Next, we discuss the signi cance of our view for understanding autistic  habits of mind and consider why these embodied habits are sometimes a  poor  t with neurotypical mental institutions. We conclude by considering how these insights highlight the two-way extended nature of social  impairments in autism, and how  this extended picture might assist in  constructing more inclusive mental institutions for both neurotypicals and people with autism alike. 1. Extended (social) cognition According to the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC), the physical  basis of cognition need not be con ned to the head. Under certain circumstances, an individual's mental states can include processes unfolding not only in her brain and body but also within her environmental  surround [Clark   Chalmers 1998]. By arguing that cognitive systems  can include – i.e., be composed of – both biological and nonbiological parts, HEC explicitly challenges our  thinking about where minds are  and what they are made of. A standard way to motivate HEC is by  rst identifying functional  properties of some mental state or process and then showing that these  properties  can  be  realized by a  heterogeneous  system whose constituents extend across brain, body, and world. For example, one way  to  characterize memory is as the storage and retrieval of information to which an individual has ready and reliable access. Often, this information is realized entirely in the brain. But it need not be. It may be that individuals have equally as ready and reliable access to environmental resources – information encoded in notebooks, maps, smartphones, scraps of paper, and even other people – that, from the perspective of HEC, can be thought of as physical realizers of memory [Sutton 2010]. An important development in recent debates has been an increased focus on the social  character  of extended cognition.  This  social  turn  stresses not only the way that agents interact with a shared world but  also  the way  the world,  in  turn,  interacts with agents.  It begins with  the recognition that our cognitive practices arise within distinct sociocultural contexts, organized by speci c material and normative aspects  © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 12 Joel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe that shape the form these practices take [Gillett   Menary 2016; Kirchhoff 2012; Stotz 2010].  Consider  the Mycenaean Linear B  tablets,  a  script  predating  the  Greek alphabet that was used to write the earliest form of Greek on clay  tablets [Malafouris 2013]. These tablets were cognitive artifacts with a  mnemonic function: record keeping of numbers and quantities. Importantly,  their  physical  structure  also  afforded  new  possibilities  for  the  manipulation and representation of information. While the information  inscribed directly on the surface of each tablet was  xed once the clay  dried, smaller versions of the tablets could nevertheless be manipulated like  index cards;  the order in which the  smaller tablets were  led  was signi cant, beyond the information encoded on the surface. This  manipulable structure not only enhanced real-time problem solving. It also transformed the physical boundaries of the relevant problem space, thereby restructuring problem-solving processes for subsequent users. Consequently, cultural practices arose around the production and use of these tablets and the new ways of organizing knowledge they supported. These practices introduced new skills and affordances «that  radically recon gure[d] the cognitive ecology and the dynamics (including  boundaries and connectivity) of the Mycenaean memory  eld for both  current users and subsequent generations» [ibid., 81]. As this example shows, the social turn in HEC debates is important  for several reasons. Not only does it foreground the central role others play in shaping our cognitive ecologies. Additionally, it foregrounds the extent  to which  these ecologies operate  on  us at multiple timescales. Early discussions of HEC mainly focused on real-time synchronic interactions with cognitive artifacts, such as an individual with Alzheimer's consulting his ever-present, memory-augmenting notebook in order to  nd his way to the museum. However, by socializing HEC in this  deep cultural-historical sense, recent work [e.g., Cash 2010; Fabry 2018;  Hutchins 2011; Kirchhoff 2012; Malafouris 2016; Menary 2013; Merritt  2013]  productively  broadens debates  to highlight  the  structuring  role  cognitive extensions play at a diachronic scale. As Cash puts this idea, «Our institutions, our languages, and the very cognitive and normative  practices within which we cognize  have been  shaped by us  to make  cognition easier, and they have, in turn, shaped the cognitive abilities © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 13 that language-enabled humans possess» [Cash 2010, 664]. In sum, these  re ections show us how our cognitive ecologies – and the material artifacts and norm-governed practices that comprise them – scaffold the diachronic development of cognitive, affective, and behavioral habits distinctive of those who share that milieu. 2. Mental institutions and their embodiment From the perspective of HEC, our habits of mind – broadly speaking, our characteristic ways of attending to, interpreting, and engaging with  the world – are ecologically structured. This structuring process begins  early  in development. For  example, even before  they  learn  language,  infants are enculturated into nonverbal habits of shared communication – rhythmic turn-taking contingencies, forms of emotional expression,  patterns of vocalization, attention regulation, etc. – that extend their social-cognitive competence and re ect the norms, values, and patterned  practices distinctive of their sociocultural milieu [Krueger 2013]. These  patterned  practices  are  the  building  blocks  of  what  Gallagher  calls  «mental institutions»: assemblages of social practices, institutions, and  norm-governed artifacts that furnish access to novel abilities or features of the world otherwise beyond our reach [Gallagher 2013; Gallagher    Crisa  2009]. As we will see, mental institutions both extend cognition  and present top-down constraints on embodied habits of mind. For Gallagher, mental institutions have two core features: (1) they  consist of cognitive artifacts and practices produced in speci c times  and places, and (2) they are activated in ways that extend our cognitive  processes when we engage with them in the right sort of way [Gallagher  2013, 6]. Mental institutions take many forms: from academic, scientific, legal, and religious institutions to more encompassing cultural and economic practices. Gallagher's  focus  is on  the  various ways mental  institutions extend cognition insofar as they open up otherwise inaccessible cognitive processes. For example, he argues that certain legal judgments – like evaluating  the  legitimacy  of a particular claim – are only  possible when  individuals engage with artifacts and practices  that make up the mental institution of  law. This  institution  furnishes  an  array of external  resources  © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 14 (e.g., contracts, systems of rights and laws, norm-governed procedures,  precedence, etc.) that enable individuals to manipulate and work through  large  amounts  of  information  they  couldn't  otherwise  process without  this  external  support.  Similarly,  when  dealing  with  complex  theories  and  phenomena,  scientists'  reasoning  processes  may  extend  across  a  heterogeneous system composed of both internal and external resources:  tools, props,  and various  representational devices,  along with  the  suite  of norm-governed practices governing their use [Toon 2015]. Guided by  these kinds of observations, Gallagher concludes that if we say that cognition supervenes on individual artifacts like notebooks, maps, smartphones, and microscopes, we ought to likewise grant cognitive status to  mental institutions designed speci cally to augment our cognitive practices [Gallagher 2013, 7]. This  is not the place to independently motivate Gallagher's argument.2 Instead, we are interested in exploring how the notion of mental  institutions might help us better understand the origin and character of social impairments in autism, and more speci cally how this notion can  illuminate the extent to which some mechanisms of autistic dysfunction  extend across both internal and external factors. In order to do so, it will  be useful to bring Maiese's [2018] recent analysis of habits of mind and  social institutions into this discussion. This analysis is useful because it can fruitfully enrich Gallagher's discussion of mental institutions, and  the social turn in HEC more generally, in two key respects: by stressing  both the embodied and potentially maladaptive character of mental-institution-supported habits of mind. For Gallagher, mental institutions remain largely external to the individual.3 They are persistent environmental resources that users can, for a time, integrate with and thus use to extend their cognitive capacities in  2 See the papers in Merritt and Varga [2013] for critical engagements with his view.  3 To be fair, this is somewhat misleading because HEC challenges strict internal-external boundaries when it comes to thinking about the location and constitution of  cognitive systems. And nothing in Gallagher's analysis is inconsistent with Maiese's  discussion of habits of mind and social institutions – although Maiese adopts an enactive perspective instead of HEC. For our purposes, what's important is that Maiese  focuses on speci c aspects of our bodily practices that aren't given explicit attention  in Gallagher's discussion, and which can therefore fruitfully supplement his account. Joel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 15 order to accomplish some otherwise-inaccessible task. Their cognitive  impact is therefore short-lived and primarily positive: to productively augment institution-speci c habits of mind. However, Maiese's analysis  helps illuminate how the values, norms, beliefs, and practices that make  up mental institutions become internalized and sedimented within an  array of unre ective bodily habits that shape our everyday interactions.  Additionally, Maiese draws our attention to the fact that not all of these  habits of mind are positive. While mental institutions cultivate practices  and habits that promote human  ourishing – e.g., by enhancing cognition or facilitating richer forms of human connection – they may also contribute to maladaptive habits that interfere with overall well-being.  In other words, we are vulnerable to maladaptive manipulation by mental institutions in a way that hasn't been widely considered within HEC  debates.4 Understanding the latter will be particularly useful for understanding the connection between mental institutions, on the one hand,  and social impairments and the experience of alienation in autism, on  the other. 2.1. Mental institutions and habits of mind Bodies are socially saturated and socio-normatively laden. This claim involves more than just the benign observation that cognition and affectivity are always socially contextualized. More substantively, we argue  that cognition and affectivity are directly modulated by the artifacts, relationships, and norms – the mental institutions – distinctive of that context. Our  habits  of mind  depend  upon  both  internal  and  external  constraints.5 Some examples will help clarify this point. Consider the unre ective  way we  uidly adopt different styles of  speaking, gesturing, behaving,  and expressing emotions as we negotiate different interpersonal contexts.  Extravagant expressions of humor (big open-mouthed smile, loud laugh4 Although Sterelny [2010] is attuned to this possibility, as is Slaby [2016] (discussed  in more detail below). 5 See Higgins [2017] for a complementary discussion of the ways that social norms  become embodied in habitual practices. © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 16 ter, dramatic gestures) may be welcome during a night out with friends,  but they will be perceived as disruptive in more formal settings such as  a professional meeting or place of worship. So, we adjust our expressive  style accordingly as we move through these different contexts. Similarly,  we attend to and  interpret the world  in a different way when out  for a  casual night with friends than we do, say, when participating in a sporting  event or political rally, or when negotiating an unfamiliar city for the  rst  time. For example, one might be more inclined to pick up on and respond  negatively to a dirty look from a stranger – or conversely, respond positively to a  irty glance – when buttressed by the encouragement of boisterous friends than when alone; when touring a city with an architectural  historian friend, we will be more attuned to speci c features of familiar  buildings and built spaces. Evaluative appraisals of salience are modulated by our interpersonal context.6 This variation is not simply a matter of internal constraints, such as feeling timid during an important meeting with one's peers and not  speaking up. Again, the key point is that contextual differences in habits  of mind are also heavily modulated by ecological constraints: background forces, norms, and expectations – constitutive features of mental institutions – that contour the dynamics of our bodily responses and patterns of appraisal as we negotiate different environments. Crucially,  we are vulnerable to being manipulated by these ecological constraints without our full awareness or consent. For example, unspoken gender  norms appear to nudge women to both expect and accept more frequent  interruptions than male counterparts [Hancock   Rubin 2015]. Slaby's  [2016]  discussion  of  the  impact  of  workplace  culture  on  cognition and affect helps to further illuminate the structuring role mental institutions play in shaping maladaptive habits of mind. Mental institutions distinctive of a particular workplace involve a complex,  multi-format assemblage of shared norms, practices, and artifacts that scaffold processes of cognition and appraisal required to accomplish various tasks. Like the legal reasoning case discussed previously, certain forms of medical knowledge, for instance, might only be possible  when individuals actively integrate with the artifacts, technologies, and  6 See Ratcliffe [2016] for a discussion of this idea in the context of self-disturbances  in schizophrenia. Joel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 17 norm-governed practices of a clinical workspace [Pimmer et al. 2013].  But workplace ecologies can in ltrate habits of mind in a more subversive and potentially disruptive way. As Slaby  [2016] observes,  the «presence bleed» of contemporary  knowledge work – the expectation that one should constantly be online  and available for work-related communication via email or instant messaging – erodes clear-cut boundaries between work  time and  leisure.  Ubiquitous communication technologies like smartphones are deeply entrenched  in  everyday  habits  of mind  and  usefully  extend  an  array  of cognitive practices. Yet, as Slaby notes, the timing and location of our engagement with them can also reinforce institutional practices and  expectations  (e.g.,  persistent  availability,  expectations  regarding  how  quickly problems ought to be dealt with) that potentially encourage maladaptive habits of mind: lingering feelings of guilt, excessive responsibility, anxiety, or an inability to "unplug" and enjoy non-work-related  activities. This is because individuals are drawn into modes of interaction, often by way of affective attunement and habituation to interaction patterns and modes of valuation that are normative for that domain [Maiese 2018, 13]. So, an individual who starts working in a high-pressure  corporate workplace may  nd  themselves  coming  to  diachronically embody the maladaptive norms of that mental institution, even if they are not fully aware of it (e.g., re exively checking for new email  every few minutes when at home or out with friends). Additionally, their  ongoing adherence to these norms ensures that the larger mental institution they are part of will continue to structure this maladaptive ecology  for other  agents.  For  example,  if  an  individual's  colleagues  establish  a workplace culture where  important  email  communication  routinely  occurs  beyond  regular  working  hours,  their  failure  to  adhere  to  this  norm will  stand  out  and  they may  face  increasing  pressure  to  adapt  - at the expense of their home life. Workplace ecologies can in this  way  diachronically "invade"  individuals over  time,  and at  a concrete  bodily level. They establish top-down constraints that selectively nudge  individuals toward maladaptive habits of mind that can potentially have  deleterious downstream effects on their own and others' wellbeing. These observations about the interactive dynamics between mental  institutions and embodied habits of mind highlight two points impor- © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 18 tant for what follows. First, they remind us that mental institutions are  not free-standing things that are largely external to the individual, apart  from  the  limited duration of our  synchronic engagements with  them.  Rather, we are bodily «tattooed» [Grosz 1994] by these institutions, insofar as they structure the range of cognitive, affective, and behavioral possibilities available  to  us as we  inhabit  them.  Second,  the  ongoing  enactment of our habits of mind collectively feed back onto and reinforce the mental institutions that constrain them. Embodied subjects are not only shaped by their social world; they also help shape their social  environment through active and reactive contributions and responses. Importantly, however, this observation further shows us that while subjects do tend to act in ways that reinforce norm-governed mental institutions, they can also defy and undermine them, in a range of different ways and to varying degrees. These acts of resistance can lead to new  habits of attention, thought, feeling, and bodily response [Maiese 2018,  14-15]. We now explore this latter point by looking at the interrelation  between mental  institutions,  embodiment,  and  social  impairments  in  autism. 3. Instituting impairment: autism, embodiment, and mental institutions7 We  now  apply  the  previous  discussion  to  autistic  spectrum  disorder  (ASD). Building off the earlier discussion of HEC, mental institutions, and habits of mind, we argue that some of the social impairments distinctive of ASD aren't entirely located in individual heads. We discuss  the signi cance of this view for understanding autistic habits of mind,  why these embodied habits of mind are sometimes a poor  t with neurotypical mental institutions, and  nally how these insights might help  us construct more inclusive mental institutions. First, some background. ASD is a complex developmental disorder  spanning a spectrum of social, communicative, imaginative, and behavioral abnormalities. These abnormalities are wide-ranging and can  vary with age and individual ability. They include non-verbal communicative de cits; repetitive behaviors; dif culties in adjusting actions to  7 The notion of «instituting impairment» is taken from Merritt [2013]. Joel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 19 suit a social context;  xated interests, especially in sensory qualities of  objects; and diminished imaginative capacities, such as the absence of  pretend play in childhood [Frith 2003; Rutter   Schopler 1987; Stone  et al.  1997].  ASD  also  tends  to  include  de cits  in  affective  bonding  and  emotion-related  behavior  [Hill   Frith  2003; Hobson  1993].  For  example, people with ASD often avoid direct eye gaze, have dif culty  seeing and interpreting social cues in gestures and facial expressions,  and struggle to connect and develop relationships with their peers. Most  behaviors needed to establish and regulate social interactions are impaired in ASD [Gallese   Rochat 2018]. There is currently no consensus about the exact cause of autism.  However, the  ve «big ideas» [Frith 2003] dominating current debates  – Theory of Mind-style explanations; Weak Central Coherence Theory; Executive Function Theories; the Broken Mirror Neuron Hypothesis; and the Social Motivation Hypothesis – are, despite other differences, committed to an internalist position insofar as they conceive of the root cause of ASD as located inside the head of the individual. But there are reasons to be skeptical of this internalist commitment.8 For our purposes, two worries are salient. First, these approaches overlook  key embodied and relational features of ASD social impairments, including both self-other mapping de cits that arise from a dysfunction  of perception-action coupling systems [Rochat et al. 2013], as well as  distinct ways of moving, perceiving, and emoting that de ne autistic  ways of being-in-the-world [Constant et al. 2018; Krueger forthcoming; Leary   Donnellan 2012]. Second, they overlook the central role  that interpersonally-distributed factors play in shaping dysfunctions characteristic  of  ASD  [De  Jaegher  2013;  Gallagher    Varga  2015;  Hobson  2002;  León  2019;  Schilbach  2016].  Conceptual  resources  from the previous discussion of HEC and mental institutions can help address these worries and thus be used to develop richer characterizations of ASD experience. 8 See Bolis et al. [2017] and De Jaegher [2013] for further discussion. © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 20 3.1. "Local" mental institutions and (neurotypical) embodiment Gallagher's discussion of mental institutions primarily focuses on largescale mental institutions such as legal systems and academic research practices. However, we  nd mental institutions at work at a more local  level, too, regulating the dynamics of our everyday engagements with  others. For example, commuter trains, grocery stores, and cocktail parties all can be understood as institutions that regulate our behavior and interactions. These local mental institutions are particularly relevant to understanding some of the social dif culties that people with ASD face  on an everyday basis. One of  the  lessons of Gallagher's  analysis of mental  institutions,  particularly when conjoined with a complementary discussion of embodied habits of mind, is that much of our everyday understanding of others and the world more generally is carried not just by brain-based  processes or internal "mentalizing" strategies, but also by beyond-thehead practices designed speci cally to make us intelligible to one another  as  social  agents  [Zawidzki 2013]. These  norm-guided  practices  are examples of «epistemic actions» [Kirsh   Maglio 1994] that have  several cognitive functions. They can augment cognition by furnishing access to novel abilities and/or features of the world otherwise beyond  our reach (e.g., rendering legal judgments). This augmenting function is  Gallagher's  primary  focus. But  they  can  also  extrapolate  existing  capacities, the way that microscopes bring small things into the range  of visual detection; and they may even convert phenomena accessible in one modality into a form accessible in another, the way that sonar devices with visual displays convert worldly events (e.g.,  ight paths) into  a digital-representational format [Humphreys 2004]. And they do these  things while regulating our behavior in predictable ways. Consider playing chess. Chess-playing occurs within a mental institution:  it  is an activity organized by a  rich network of  rules, practices,  artifacts,  and expectations  that  exist  prior  to  token episodes of  chess-playing. What is important here is that, when playing chess with  someone, we needn't rely upon an intracranial capacity to infer our opponent's desire to play chess and intention to do so fairly; rather, we see  these things directly in their playing, just as they see our desires and intentions in our chess-playing behavior. In other words, we make ourJoel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 21 selves intelligible to one another by conforming over time to the institutional practices, rules, and strategies of playing chess [McGeer 2015].  Following Humphreys [2004], we can say that the local institution regulating this shared practice converts a computationally demanding folk psychological task (making inferences about others' mental states) into  an easier perceptual-motor task (jointly coordinating our behavior to shared rules of chess) – and, in doing so, reduces the descriptive complexity of the environment by guiding our attention to salient features  of our opponent's norm-governed behavior. It thereby assists us with the  process of selective attention. This  is  just one  example of  a  local mental  institution. They  take  many forms, and vary with time and place: playing games; lining up in  the queue to board a train or airplane; placing our menu on the table as  a signal that we're ready to order; taking a phone call in the vestibule to  avoid irritating fellow rail  travelers in the quiet carriage; pausing in a  conversation to let the other person  nish a thought; or expressing our  disapproval with  a well-timed  eyebrow  raise. Van Dijk  and Rietveld  [2017] give the example of being seated in a "silence area" in a train, so  that talking is not really an option; nor is drinking from the bottle of water that belongs to one's neighbor. For those operating within a mental  institution, «certain models of expectancy come to be established, and  the patterns, which over time emerge from these practices, guide perception as well as action» [Roepstorff et al. 2010, 1056]. Many aspects  of social understanding are in this way carried by the world, scaffolded  by the norms and routines that regulate our embodied interactions and habits of mind, and which have their social signi cance built into them  [McGeer 2001]. Understanding others involves bringing shared norms  to bear, for our sense of what people generally do and what they can be  expected to do is linked to our views about what they ought to do. The ability to apply norms and identify situations in which relevant routines  are appropriate rests on a capacity for navigating different social contexts. To return to HEC, we thus see that local mental institutions extend  cognition at multiple timescales. On a synchronic basis, they provide the regulatory  tracks upon which token episodes of  social  interaction  run and acquire their normative character. This is a process that be- © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 22 gins at  birth, within  infant-caregiver  interactions. However,  repeated  engagements with  local mental  institutions also shape  the diachronic development of bodily practices and habits of mind that are responsive to the institutions, habits that become sedimented within our more  general way of negotiating the world. That is, we learn these rules over  the course of learning and socialization; when our behavior conforms  to shared expectations, it  is met with approval and praised; and when  it fails to conform to these expectations, it is met with disapproval and  sanctioned. Over time, we internalize norms and shared expectations in  the form of characteristic behavior or habits. What  Rietveld  and  Kiverstein  [2014]  call  «situated  normativity»  encompasses norms of adequacy and  inadequacy associated with habitual behavior within sociocultural settings. As children engage with  aspects of the environment, their performance is subject to normative assessment as better or worse, and as more or less correct given situational demands. As a child attempts to name various colors, for example, she receives feedback about the appropriateness of her responses and thereby acquires a feel for which uses are acceptable. Which color  names are better or worse, correct or incorrect, depends in part on sociocultural norms and the speci c setting in which color naming takes  place [ibid., 332]. Whereas a more coarse-grained categorization may  be appropriate when it comes to traf c signs, clothing and home décor  may  call out  for  a more nuanced naming  of  particular  shades. What  counts as adequate-color naming will depend,  in  large part, on what  other members of a sociocultural practice do. Along similar lines, a child will learn how to engage with various tools and artifacts, and how  to conduct herself within various social settings.  When she fails to conform to expectations, she will receive feedback that alerts her to this.  She will, for example, be corrected or scolded, often by way of subtle  indicators of social disapproval. To  return  to  ASD,  the  salient  point  is  this:  because  people with  ASD lack (for reasons discussed below) experiential access to many of  the normative features of neurotypical mental institutions, they are excluded from the social-cognitive bene ts and embodied habits of mind  these institutions help to develop, regulate, and sustain. Such dif culty  is connected to the fact that in neurotypical institutions shared expecJoel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 23 tations often are conveyed by way of very  ne-grained nuances in tone  of voice, facial expression, posture, and other forms of body language.  Because people with ASD  lack access  to  these  ne-grained  features,  they  nd it dif cult to engage effectively with others within these social environments. This lack of experiential access is a key part of the  social dif culties they face in negotiating the neurotypical world. Importantly, however, this lack of access is not an "in principle" exclusion.  There are ways of co-constructing more  inclusive mental  institutions  that both neurotypicals and people with ASD may jointly inhabit and  bene t from. 3.2. ASD, embodiment, and alternative habits of mind We now unpack this claim in several steps. First, we discuss the explanatory signi cance of the distinct ways that people with ASD experientially inhabit and use their bodies to move, express emotions, and attend  to the world and others. Next, we consider why and how the distinctive  character of these embodied habits of mind fail to be responsively integrated into neurotypical mental institutions, and how this lack of integration leads to social dif culties for people with ASD. To begin with the  rst step: people with ASD often use their bodies in ways that, from a neurotypical perspective, may appear unusual  or off-putting. For example,  they may  repeatedly  shrug,  squint,  pout,  or  rock  back  and  forth;  repeatedly  touch  speci c  objects;  turn  away  when someone attempts to speak with them; maintain unusual or inert  postures, or appear to get "stuck" in indecisive movements; have dif culty imitating actions; and require explicit verbal or gestural prompts  to perform an action [Donnellan et al. 2012; Leary   Donnellan 2012;  Robledo et al. 2012]. A particularly salient example is a delay in conversational responses. Donnellan and colleagues found that twelve young  adolescents with minimal verbal skills, all of whom were labeled developmentally disabled or autistic, were, in fact, capable of offering competent conversational responses – but only, on average, after fourteen seconds of silence [Leary   Donnellan 2012, 57]. However, such a delay violates neurotypical norms; most neurotypicals would likely  nd a  pause this long uncomfortable and either change the subject or abandon © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 24 the conversation. ASD habits of mind thus often fail to mesh smoothly with neurotypical institutions. These are embodied ASD habits of mind observable from an external third-person perspective. However,  rst-person reports also indicate  that people with ASD often experience their bodies in ways that differ  from neurotypicals. They experience dif culties controlling, executing,  and combining movements  –  from  ne motor control, grip planning,  and  anticipatory movements,  to more  complex  action-sequences  like  reaching for a book, dancing, or negotiating a crowded hallway [Eigsti  2013; Leary   Hill 1996; Whyatt   Craig  2013]. This  feeling  stems  not  simply  from measurable coordination dif culties  but also  from a  felt sense of diminished agency and loss of bodily control, including diminished proprioceptive and kinaesthetic awareness  [Blanche et al. 2012; Robledo et al. 2012]. These experiential dif culties can  lead  to  challenges when it comes to effortlessly engaging with the environment  and other people – that is, smoothly integrating with neurotypical patterns of interaction and habits of mind. Some individuals with ASD are  aware of these differences. One person reports that «I was sitting on the   oor and when I got up after looking at a couple of books, my friend  said I got up like an animal does» – and furthermore, that although she  is aware that her patterns of movement and habits of mind are different  from those of neurotypicals, she remains unaware of how they differ, exactly [Robledo et al. 2012, 6]. These  reports  lend support  to  the  idea  that  people with ASD exhibit  a  kind  of  perceptual  «style  blindness»:  an  inability  to  perceive  expressive or  stylistic qualities of neurotypical patterns of movement  and embodied habits of mind [Krueger forthcoming]. As a result, they  lack experiential access to socially-salient information needed to  t into  and become responsively regulated by the expressive norms governing  neurotypical mental institutions. When we speak of stylistic qualities of  movement, we are referring to the speci c way an action is performed, its qualitative character.9 For instance, we can reach out to shake someone's hand  in a  friendly, aggressive, or indifferent manner;  similarly,  a smile can be cold, sarcastic, con dent, or wry. These are expressive  9 Daniel Stern [2010] calls these qualities «forms of vitality». Joel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 25 qualities of actions that carry socially salient information. To understand the intentions and meanings of others' actions, it is not enough to  simply see the action itself. We must also perceive the social information encoded in its style, that is, within the qualitative dynamics of its  performance. And these stylistic features often are very subtle. Consider the  ne-grained difference between a friendly kiss and a lover's kiss, as well as between playful sarcasm and angry sarcasm. To distinguish between the two types of kiss, one must attend to  the highly speci c  features  of  the kissing movements as  they unfold; and  to  distinguish  between the two types of sarcasm, one must attend to highly speci c,  often subtle, features of the speaker's volume and intonation patterns. There is evidence that individuals with ASD lack perceptual access  to these  ne-grained stylistic features of actions. Several studies highlight atypical processing of low-level, sensory, and perceptual information in ASD [Dakin   Frith 2005; Happé 1999; Mottron et al. 2006].  There is evidence, for instance, that children with ASD struggle to extract relevant information from biological cues [Rutherford et al. 2006];  they also fail to correctly interpret human activities portrayed in point light displays [Blake   Shiffrar 2007]. Other studies have found  that  both children and adults with ASD struggle to decode visual information found in facial expressions and actions [Ashwin et al. 2006; Atkinson 2009; Hubert et al. 2007; Teunisse   de Gelder 2001], and to extract  social-emotional information from vocal cues [Philip et al. 2010]. Perhaps  the most powerful  support  for style blindness in ASD is  found in a recent study by Rochat et al. [2013].10 Twenty high-functioning patients with ASD, along with twenty neurotypical controls, watched  a series of short video clips involving two people sitting across from one  another at a table, performing different actions. These actions included giving a high  ve, shaking hands, pointing, caressing the other person's  forearm, taking the other's hand, giving or retrieving a mug, and holding up their hand to signal "stop". In these clips, the same type of action  was performed with a different style: e.g., a vigorous handshake in one  clip, a gentle handshake in another. Participants in the study viewed different combinations of these action clips and were then asked to make  10 See also Gallese and Rochat [2018]. © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 26 judgments  about  them. While  participants with ASD were  similar  to  neurotypicals in identifying kinds of actions (e.g., handshake vs. high-  ve), they made frequent errors when making judgments about the style of different actions, including dif culty recognizing similar styles (e.g.,  gentle) across different actions (e.g., handshake vs. high  ve). According to the authors, these  ndings advance previous work insofar as they  suggest  that  style  blindness  is  not  limited  to  imitative  contexts  (e.g.,  such as when an individual with ASD is asked to imitate an observed  action) but that it is, rather, a primary de cit – a perceptual inability to  extract socially salient information from the qualitative kinematics of  others' actions [ibid., 1922]. This style blindness is signi cant for how people with ASD inhabit  – or fail to inhabit – neurotypical mental institutions. This is because, within  such  institutions,  people's  desires  and  expectations  often  are  communicated via  ne-grained modulations in the qualitative dynamics  of action and expression. These modulations include an ever-so-slight  raise of the eyebrows to signal skepticism, subtle modi cations in the  tone of voice to signal sarcasm, or subtle changes in posture to indicate, "you're annoying me;  stop  talking". Conforming to  social norms and  expectations within neurotypical  institutions requires that  subjects be  able to gauge  ne-grained features of other's bodily expressions. However, subjects with ASD  nd it dif cult to attend to these features; and  without perceptual access to stylistic features of neurotypical patterns  of behavior, people with ASD often cannot smoothly participate in the  everyday practices of neurotypical institutions and understand the emotions and intentions of others. Moreover, the ability to imitate these expressive kinematics is a core skill needed to be responsively regulated by the different (local) mental institutions through which we move on a  day-to-day basis [Lakin et al. 2003; Meltzoff   Decety 2003]. However,  without this capacity, people with ASD lack  uent access to the cognitive and emotional bene ts these ritualistic practices confer [Ingersoll  2008; Stewart et al. 2013]. Because subjects with ASD have dif culty  detecting these subtle social cues, they sometimes turn to general rules or explicit theorizing strategies to compensate [Shanker 2004]. From the perspective of HEC, there is a sense in which children and  adults with ASD can be said to inhabit different social worlds – underJoel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 27 stood as collections of mental institutions that shape distinctive habits of mind – than neurotypicals do [Klin et al. 2003]. But, to be clear, it's  not the case that people with ASD lack access to any kind of norm-governed mental  institution whatsoever; nor  is  it  the  case  that  they  lack  access to neurotypical mental institutions entirely. Clearly, they do have some degree of access to the latter. People with autism are part of our  shared world and, to varying degrees, responsive to what neurotypical  people say and do. Rather, the point is that they have diminished practical  uency when it comes to engaging with neurotypical institutions,  the way a non-scientist may lack practical  uency with a microscope or  set of research practices and thus lack access to the cognitive bene ts  and habits of mind scienti c institutions confer. This diminished practical  uency occurs because the signposts for social interaction found in  neurotypical institutions typically are too  ne-grained and nuanced for  subjects with ASD to gauge. Nevertheless,  the  social  worlds  and  mental  institutions  of  ASD  may have their own norm-governed character, one not easily accessible  to neurotypical partners. This becomes clearer by  rst observing that  some of the unusual movements, behavior, and habits of mind people with ASD exhibit are more than meaningless re exes or nervous tics.  Rather, they are environmentally responsive and often situationally-appropriate; they play an important role in helping individuals with ASD  adapt to and negotiate changing environments. For example, patterns  of  "self-stimulation"  or "self-stims"  – which consist  of  behavior  like  hand- apping,   nger-snapping,  tapping  objects,  repetitive  vocalizations, or  rocking  back and  forth – may be context-sensitive habits of  mind that help to organize incoming sensory  ows in order to manage  the physical, perceptual, and emotional demands of a given situation [Leary   Donnellan 2012, 51]. In cases where this incoming information  threatens  to  be  overwhelming  (i.e.,  hypersensitivity),  self-stims  can  occlude  signal  noise  and  down-regulate  the  individual's  anxiety;  alternatively, in cases where the individual requires heightened arousal  in order to better access salient information (i.e., hyposensitivity), selfstims can have an arousal-generating, attention-directing effect. Selfstims thus can be understood as a way to strengthen selective attention  so that subjects can ignore irrelevant information and focus on what is  © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 28 important; this puts them in a better position to gauge relevant social  cues. So, treatment programs that have traditionally tried to eliminate or suppress self-stims [e.g., Azrin et al. 1973] have failed to see their  norm-governed  character  and  the  positive  role  they may  play within  autistic habits of mind. Additionally, there is evidence that many social dif culties people  with ASD face result from the fact that neurotypical norms, expectations, and mental institutions simply aren't adequate to meet the needs  or  idiosyncratic  features  of  ASD habits  of  mind. What  makes  them  inadequate  is  that  these norms  and expectations  often  are  unspoken,  highly  context-speci c,  and  communicated  by way  of  nuanced  body  language. Because subjects with ASD rely primarily on straightforward  verbal expressions and more coarse-grained body language to communicate, neurotypical mental institutions often do not suit them. To see this, note that within neurotypical mental institutions, the ability to use language appropriately and understand what others  say goes  well beyond knowing the literal meaning of the expression used. It also  involves an appreciation of the setting in which the speech occurs. The  meaning of "Mark is at the bank", for example, is highly context-sensitive, and rests on knowledge about whether Mark frequently goes angling  at the river or instead works at Chase Manhattan [de Villiers et al. 2007, 295]. de Villiers and colleagues found that subjects with ASD do not have  much dif culty with the appropriate use of language when it comes to  the content of literal speech, but exhibit pronounced de cits with respect  to  gurative speech. This makes it dif cult for them to understand metaphor, irony, and conversational implicature [ibid., 315]. Understanding the  meaning of  gurative speech requires that subjects attend to  ne-grained  contextual  features and  gauge  the  desires  and  intentions of  those who  are speaking, but these desires and intentions typically are conveyed via highly nuanced aspects of bodily expression and comportment. Because  subjects with ASD  nd it challenging to engage in this sort of selective  attention, often they say things that lack relevance to the hearer, do not anticipate what hearers will want to know, and take  gurative speech (including metaphor, sarcasm, and irony) literally. But it is possible to design institutions that are a better  t for subjects  with ASD. This observation is strengthened by  ndings that high-funcJoel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 29 tioning autistic people report pleasurable and ef cient interactions with  other autistic persons, even when they struggle to connect with neurotypical mental institutions [Komeda et al. 2015; Schilbach 2016]. This is  because their interactions with other people with ASD take place within  mental institutions governed by ASD-friendly norms and expectations.  In these settings, the norm is for people to speak in more straightforward terms, relying primarily on literal language rather than metaphor  and more clearly signaling the use of sarcasm. For example, if a subject  with ASD wants someone to stop talking, the expectation may be that  s/he simply will say "stop talking". This request will not be understood  as rude or impertinent but as clear and competent communication of her desires. So, it's not as though people with ASD lack social competence  entirely. Rather, their impairment is heightened when trying to inhabit  and engage with mental institutions that aren't organized in ways designed to accommodate ASD habits of mind. In sum, these  insights  suggest  that  the disturbance of breakdown  leading to social impairments in ASD is, in an important sense, a twoway  impairment,  and  not  just con ned  to  the  head  of  the  individual  with ASD [McGeer 2009, 310]. It includes environmental features: neurotypical institutions that lack the  exibility and inclusivity needed to  responsively mesh  with ASD habits  of mind. As  we'll  see  in  the   nal section, such considerations may have important consequences for thinking about intervention and therapeutic strategies. 4. Further implications and conclusion As we've discussed, ASD has for several decades been thought to consist in a Theory of Mind de cit. This assumption has shaped treatment  and intervention strategies, which have generally been geared  toward  helping individuals develop their individual mentalizing capacities [Begeer 2014]. However, based on the previous considerations, we can  highlight at least two shortcomings of such approaches. First, they overlook the role that embodied and interactive features play in shaping characteristic impairments and offer few resources for addressing these  features. Second, they presuppose that social dif culties in ASD consist in a failure to conform to normative expectations of neurotypicals,  © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 30 without acknowledging (or offering resources to address) the two-way  nature of these impairments. If, as we've argued, autism is fundamentally an embodied and relational phenomenon – and not simply an in-the-head cognitive de cit  – intervention strategies should be tailored accordingly. One promising strategy is music therapy, which can involve listening, singing, or joint  music-making. Srinivasan and Bhat [2013] observed that music-based  interventions  are  attractive  for  individuals  with  ASD  for  three  reasons. First, they can address core impairments in joint attention, social reciprocity, and verbal and nonverbal communication, along with  comorbidities of atypical perception, motor performance, and behavioral problems. Second, children with ASD often have enhanced pitch  processing abilities and musical memory compared to typically developing children and therefore may  nd these interventions particularly  pleasurable  [Heaton 2003]. Third, music-based activities  can  provide  non-intimidating contexts to interact with musical instruments and other people by engaging in predictable musically-guided interactions with  social partners [Darrow   Armstrong 1999]. Evidence suggests that these kinds of musical interventions positively impact various forms of development, including communicative, social-emotional,  and motor  development.  For  example, music  therapies can facilitate verbal and gestural skills in children with ASD; enhance social skills such as eye contact, joint attention, mimicry, and turn-taking; and support the improvement of  ne and gross motor skills  [Srinivasan   Bhat 2013]. This can help subjects with ASD to strengthen their ability to gauge  ne-grained social cues and their capacity for  "body-reading". In a music setting, subjects do rely on bodily expression to communicate – but eye contact, bodily expressions, and mimicry are more exaggerated than in standard neurotypical settings. And  because they are punctuated by changes in musical tone and rhythm, they are easier for subjects with ASD to detect. In this way, musical activities like listening, singing, and joint music-making provide a regulative context in which children with ASD can  work with neurotypicals to construct alternative musically-guided mental institutions. Musically-generated auditory and rhythmic signals can regulate attention and movement in a number of ways: by in uencing  Joel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 31 the timing of motor neuron discharge; decreasing felt muscle fatigue;  facilitating automatic movements by providing predictable temporal cues; improving reaction time and response quality through facilitated  responsive anticipation;  and providing auditory  feedback  for proprioceptive  control mechanisms  [Thaut 1988, 130]. Music  can  thus  serve  as scaffolding for the development of selective attention and strengthen subjects' ability to detect social cues [Krueger 2019; Maiese 2016]. In addition, the opportunity to interact in a musical setting may help counteract the tendency of some subjects with ASD to withdraw  from social interaction. Shanker [2004] notes that because subjects with  ASD are sometimes overreactive and feel overwhelmed by visual or auditory stimuli, they may avert their gaze, put their hands over their ears, or avoid interaction with others. Likewise, McGeer [2001] suggests that  in an effort to manage sensory experiences, subjects with ASD might  feel the need to shut out other people; however, that makes it dif cult  for them to develop social and communicative skills. The more a child with ASD avoids interaction with others, the more s/he is deprived of  the  sorts  of  experiences  needed  for  social  development. Musical  settings provide a place where subjects can come together with other people and begin to develop an intuitive understanding of what others are  thinking and feeling. Coordinated musical improvisation, for example,  may help give participants a sense of being part of meaningful shared activity.  There are often moments  in music  therapy where  there  is  a  "buzz" between the two players, for example when they spontaneously  come  together  at a  cadence point or  somehow know when  to  end or  where to go next [Maratos et al. 2011, 92]. This kind of "communicative  musicality" allows subjects to experience a kind of relating that is very  different from that involved in talking, and yet offers them an avenue to overcome social isolation. In addition, it allows those who feel "out of  sync" with the social world to "get back into the groove" of interacting  with others. 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Keywords Extended Cognition; Embodied Cognition; Habits of Mind; Autism Abstract We argue that the notion of "mental institutions" – discussed in recent debates about  extended cognition – can help better understand the origin and character of social impairments in autism, and also help illuminate the extent to which some mechanisms  of autistic dysfunction extend across both internal and external factors (i.e., they do  not just reside within an individual's head). After providing some conceptual background, we discuss the connection between mental institutions and embodied habits  of mind. We  then  discuss  the  signi cance  of  our  view  for  understanding  autistic  habits of mind and consider why these embodied habits are sometimes a poor  t with  neurotypical  mental  institutions. We  conclude  by  considering  how  these  insights  highlight  the  two-way, extended nature of  social  impairments  in autism, and how  this extended picture might assist in constructing more inclusive mental institutions  and intervention strategies. Joel KrueGer & mIChelle maIeSe © 2018 Thaumàzein 10.13136/thau.v6i0 meNtal INStItutIoNS 41 Joel Krueger Sociology, Philosophy, and Anthropology University of Exeter Amory, Rennes Drive Exeter EX4 4RJ UK E-mail: j.krueger@exeter.ac.uk Michelle Maiese Department of Philosophy Emmanuel College 400 The Fenway Boston, MA 02115 USA E-mail: maiesemi@emmanuel.edu