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Burrell-Hodgson, Gerrard

Burrell-Hodgson, G.

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Autism and theory of mind  An examination of different modalities

A spccific deficit in Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities has been proposed to explain the

distinct pattern of sociallcognitivc, dcricits in individuals with autism (Frith, 1989).

Leslie and Frith (1988), Pcmcr, Frith, Leslie and Lcckharn (1989) and Baron-Colien

and Goodhart (1994) have also indicated that children with autism have a specific

difficulty in understanding the principle that "seeing leads to knowing". However,

other studies designed to measure ToM abilities have reported weak mcntalising skills

in individuals with developmental language disorders (Shields, Varicy, Broks and

Simpson, 1996), dcaf people (Peterson and Siegal, 1995) and individuals with

intellectual difficultics (Shulman and Pilowsky, 1996). This study was designed to

examine the developmental and cognitive correlates of one aspect of ToM. A method

derived from ONeill and Gopnik (199 1) %vas adapted and children with autism (n =

17), children with intellectual difficulties of undifferentiated actiology (n = 19) and

normally developing children (n = 21) were compared on their ability to understand

the principle that "SEEING, FEELING and TELLING" lead to knowing. As

predicted, individuals with autism (88%) and children with intellectual difficulties

(63%) had difficulty identifying the role of informational access in knowledge,

whereas the normally developing group did not (14%). Logistic regression analyses

revealed that group membership and verbal mental age, when measured by the Test

for Reception of Grammar (TROG; Bishop, 1983), were the best predictors of task

performance. Discussion focuses on the implications of the findings and emphasises

the need to carefully consider what tasks actually measure as well as the specific

actiology of comparison groups when studying abilities and impain-nents of

individuals with autism and intellectual difficultie

Autism and theory of mind : an examination of different modalities.

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