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Context Thinking
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Problem of basic trust

Trust is not tangible. It arises from expectations, repeated experiences, social cues and the interpretation of intentions. In low-contextual thinking, this process is often difficult, leaving basic trust fragile.
Two people close to each other but with a subtle emotional distance between them
Basic trust grows slowly through repetition, intention, and time. When that coherence is hard to feel, closeness remains fragile.

Trust is not tangible. It arises from expectations, repeated experiences, social cues and the interpretation of intentions. In low-contextual thinking, this process is often difficult, leaving basic trust fragile.

Difficulties in low-contextual thinking

Examples

Case

A friend doesn't reply to a message once. The low-contextual person immediately concludes: "He is no longer interested." There is no room to consider context (busy, forgetting, other priority). Trust collapses immediately.

Case

A partner says "I trust you." The low-contextual person only experiences this at that moment. Because there is difficulty with timelines and linking behavior over the longer term, this trust must be explicitly confirmed again and again.

Trust over time

Essentially, trust builds through:

Because low-contextual people have difficulty with this type of integration, they experience trust as something that needs to be restored over and over again. Basic trust is therefore difficult to establish, and remains vulnerable in the event of minor disruptions.

What does the developmental perspective say?

The idea of basic trust is not new. Erik Erikson (1968) saw basic trust versus basic mistrust as the very first developmental task, in the first eighteen months of life. Attachment theory (Bowlby, Ainsworth, Main) developed this further into a large research field.

Izaki and colleagues (2024) discuss the neurobiological roots of the attachment system.1 Their overview is limited to specific brain regions and mechanisms; we strictly adhere here to what they actually discuss.

Trust and autism — what does the research say?

An old misconception is that autistic children cannot form attachments. That is incorrect. Teague and colleagues (2017) showed in a systematic review that autistic children do indeed form attachments — although the standard measurement method (the so-called Strange Situation, an observation procedure) is not without problems in this context.2

A recent meta-analysis by Trottier-Dumont and colleagues (2025) pooled 202 autistic children from six studies.3 Approximately 46% were securely attached, 19% avoidant, 9% resistant, and 27% disorganized (erratic, without a clear strategy).

An important nuance. The first three figures are close to the general population. Disorganized attachment is clearly elevated in some age groups. It is therefore not accurate to say that the picture is "fully comparable."

In adults, Sonfelianu and colleagues (2025) provided a systematic review of twelve studies.4 One caveat weighs heavily: almost 99% of the studied adults were women. The conclusions therefore cannot simply be extended to men. Taurino and colleagues (2025) mapped the broader research field.5

Epistemic trust: trust in the source

A related concept is epistemic trust: the ability to accept information from others as relevant and usable. Its restoration is seen as an active ingredient of psychotherapy (Campbell, Kumpasoğlu & Fonagy, 2024).6 Its loss is called epistemic petrification by Fonagy, Luyten and Allison (2015): an early relational rupture through which someone no longer uses communicated knowledge to update their worldview.7

A synthesis of our own, noted as such: context sensitivity is an ability that grows in safe relationships and can falter in unsafe relationships or with a neurobiological predisposition. Giving trust requires precisely the opposite of context blindness: being able to set context aside for a moment — "I trust you, even without proof right now."

Note: epistemic trust as a measurable variable is still young; its validity is still under development.

Overlap between autism, attachment disorders, CPTSD and EUPD

Similar complaints can belong to very different presentations: autism, attachment disorders, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) and emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD). Sarr and colleagues (2025) surveyed 106 international experts in a structured consensus study (a Delphi study) on how to distinguish these presentations.8

That produced 275 consensus statements about overlapping and distinguishing characteristics. Important: a Delphi study provides expert consensus, not empirical evidence. The final round moreover relied on 55 participants. Read the outcome therefore as a shared judgment of experts, not as hard evidence.

But note: the very attempt to neatly separate these presentations is itself a form of pigeonhole thinking. The fact that the complaints overlap so strongly is precisely the signal for us. From a contextual thinking perspective, the question is not "which box does this person belong to?", but "how does this brain process context — and where does it get stuck?" That question cuts across the labels. See also Context and DSM.

Further

See also personality disorders for the consequences of fragile basic trust in the DSM classifications.

References

  1. Izaki, A., Verbeke, W. J. M. I., Vrtička, P., & Ein-Dor, T. (2024). A narrative on the neurobiological roots of attachment-system functioning. Communications Psychology, 2(1), 96. doi:10.1038/s44271-024-00147-9 — PubMed 39406946
  2. Teague, S. J., Gray, K. M., Tonge, B. J., & Newman, L. K. (2017). Attachment in children with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 35, 35–50. doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2016.12.002
  3. Trottier-Dumont, W., Bussières, E.-L., Deneault, A.-A., Madigan, S., & Cyr, C. (2025). Attachment in autistic children as measured with the strange situation procedure: a systematic review and a meta-analysis. Attachment & Human Development, 27(4), 634–656. doi:10.1080/14616734.2025.2541232
  4. Sonfelianu, A., González-Sala, F., & Lacomba-Trejo, L. (2025). Exploring Attachment in Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review. Actas Españolas de Psiquiatría, 53(4), 813–838. doi:10.62641/aep.v53i4.1928
  5. Taurino, A., Musso, P., Risoli, T., Coppola, G., Stifano, C., & Cassibba, R. (2025). Attachment Security and Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Scoping Review. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. doi:10.1007/s40489-025-00533-x
  6. Campbell, C., Kumpasoğlu, G. B., & Fonagy, P. (2024). Mentalizing, Epistemic Trust, and the Active Ingredients of Psychotherapy. Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 52(4), 435–451. doi:10.1521/pdps.2024.52.4.435 — PubMed 39679701
  7. Fonagy, P., Luyten, P., & Allison, E. (2015). Epistemic Petrification and the Restoration of Epistemic Trust. Journal of Personality Disorders, 29(5), 575–609. doi:10.1521/pedi.2015.29.5.575 — PubMed 26393477
  8. Sarr, R., Spain, D., Quinton, A. M. G., Happé, F., Brewin, C. R., Radcliffe, J., et al. (2025). Differential diagnosis of autism, attachment disorders, complex post-traumatic stress disorder and emotionally unstable personality disorder: A Delphi study. British Journal of Psychology, 116(1), 1–33. doi:10.1111/bjop.12731 — PubMed 39300915