Seriation, Conservation, and Theory of Mind Abilities in Individuals with Autism, Individuals with Mental Retardation, and Normally Developing Children

Seriation, conservation, and theory of mind abilities were examined in individuals with autism ( N = 16), mental retardation ( N = 16), and in normally developing children ( N = 16). Seriation tasks included seriation of tubes, blocks, and flat squares. Conservation tasks included conservation of area, number, substance, quantity, and weight. Theory of mind tasks involved predicting false belief and understanding value and fact beliefs. Participants with autism performed better than participants with mental retardation on seriation, while no differences emerged between these groups on conservation and false belief. Individuals with autism performed less well than individuals with mental retardation on the value and fact belief tasks; however, when verbal ability was held as a covariant, the difference was no longer significant. Normally developing children performed better than the other two groups on all tasks. These results suggest that autism does not involve a specific impairment in theory of mind and that theory of mind deficits are not unique to autism.     

自闭症儿童的心理理论发展及其与言语能力的关系

研究用5个信念任务测量心理理论能力,用皮博迪图片词汇测验测量言语能力,比较12名自闭症儿童和同等言语能力的28名正常儿童的表现,并分析了心理理论和言语能力的相关。结果表明:(1)自闭症儿童的心理理论发展显著落后于同等言语智力的正常儿童;(2)自闭症和正常儿童的信念理解发展序列基本一致;(3)心理理论和言语能力保持中度相关,但控制年龄因素后的偏相关不显著。本研究支持心理理论发展的领域特殊性观点。     

孤独症儿童心理推测能力的影响因素的研究

本研究除了关注年龄和智力因素的影响外 ,还首次探讨了自闭症病症的程度与心理推测能力的关系。综合本研究和以往研究的结果得出 :生理年龄大并同时伴随较高智力能有助于自闭症儿童理解他人的心理。此外 ,本研究发现 ,自闭症病症程度与心理推测能力之间有显著的负相关。采用大样本去论证这个关系的存在应是今后研究的一个方向。     

Neurocognitive function and joint attention ability in young children with autism spectrum disorder versus developmental delay

Studies have shown that young children with autism are not impaired on prefrontal tasks relative to what would be expected for their mental age, raising questions about the executive dysfunction hypothesis of autism. These studies did not include ventromedial prefrontal tasks, however. The present study examined whether young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are impaired on ventromedial prefrontal tasks, and whether performance on such tasks is correlated with a core autism symptom, joint attention ability. Seventy-two 3- to 4-year-old children with ASD, 34 3- to 4-year-old developmentally delayed children, and 39 12- to 46-month-old typically developing children, matched on mental age, were administered ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal tasks and joint attention tasks. Children with ASD performed similarly to comparison groups on all executive function tasks, indicating that at this early age, there is no autism-specific pattern of executive dysfunction. Ventromedial, but not dorsolateral, prefrontal task performance was strongly correlated with joint attention ability, however. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is hypothesized to play a role in the development of joint attention and possibly some aspects of the autistic syndrome.     

Age and language skills of deaf children in relation to theory of mind development

Using four traditional false-belief tasks, I investigated deaf children's age and expressive language skills in relation to their theory of mind development. The children's parents who signed reported on their own knowledge of a mental sign vocabulary. The results indicate age of the child to be strongly related to theory of mind development. Deaf children demonstrated an ability to pass the theory of mind assessment battery between the ages of 7 and 8 years, on average. In comparison, hearing children have consistently demonstrated the ability to perform such tasks between the ages of 4 and 5 years. Therefore, the results indicate deaf children are delayed by approximately 3 years in this cognitive developmental milestone. Expressive language skills of the children and sign language skills of the parents who signed were not found to be significantly related to the children's theory of mind development.     

The conceptual basis for referential word meaning in children with autism

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of the representation of substantive word meanings in children with autism. The subjects included 3 groups of autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children, who were matched on verbal mental age. The subjects participated in 2 experiments investigating their comprehension of words for basic level and superordinate level categories. The 3 groups were equivalent in their performance in both experiments. They also showed the same patterns of overextension and underextension errors that were related to a prototype representation of the underlying concepts. These findings suggest that semantic knowledge for concrete objects is represented and organized in similar ways in autistic, retarded, and normal children and that previous findings on cognitive deficits in autistic children are more likely related to their inability to use cognitive representations in an appropriate and flexible manner.     

The Relation between Individual Differences in Fantasy and Theory of Mind

The relation between early fantasy/pretense and children's knowledge about mental life was examined in a study of 152 3- and 4-year-old boys and girls. Children were interviewed about their fantasy lives (e.g., imaginary companions, impersonation of imagined characters) and were given tasks assessing their level of pretend play and verbal intelligence. In a second session 1 week later, children were given a series of theory of mind tasks, including measures of appearance-reality, false belief, representational change, and perspective taking. The theory of mind tasks were significantly intercorrelated with the effects of verbal intelligence and age statistically controlled. Individual differences in fantasy/pretense were assessed by (1) identifying children who created imaginary characters, and (2) extracting factor scores from a combination of interview and behavioral measures. Each of these fantasy assessments was significantly related to the theory of mind performance of the 4-year-old children, independent of verbal intelligence.     

探索自闭症幼儿装扮游戏特点的实验研究

为探索自闭症幼儿的装扮游戏特点 ,了解其游戏水平低下的相关因素 ,选取了6名平均心理年龄为 2 3个月的自闭症幼儿作为研究对象 ,同时将心理年龄与之匹配的弱智儿童和正常儿童各 6名作为对照组进行了实验研究。以秒为单位对实验结果和过程进行编码分析后所获结果 :自闭症幼儿的装扮游戏水平在三组中最低。分析游戏过程推测其可能原因为 :自闭症幼儿缺乏对游戏本身的兴趣、游戏过程中缺乏与他人经验分享、对玩具功能缺乏正确认知能力。     

Signposts to development: theory of mind in deaf children

Possession of a "theory of mind" (ToM)--as demonstrated by an understanding of the false beliefs of others--is fundamental in children's cognitive development. A key question for debate concerns the effect of language input on ToM. In this respect, comparisons of deaf native-signing children who are raised by deaf signing parents with deaf late-signing children who are raised by hearing parents provide a critical test. This article reports on two studies (N = 100 and N = 39) using "thought picture" measures of ToM that minimize verbal task-performance requirements. These studies demonstrated that even when factors such as syntax ability, mental age in spatial ability, and executive functioning were considered, deaf late signers still showed deficits in ToM understanding relative to deaf native signers or hearing controls. Even though the native signers were significantly younger than a sample of late signers matched for spatial mental age and scores on a test of receptive sign language ability, native signers outperformed late signers on pictorial ToM tasks. The results are discussed in terms of access to conversation and extralinguistic influences on development such as the presence of sibling relationships, and suggest that the expression of a ToM is the end result of social understanding mediated by early conversational experience.     

The impact of verbal capacity on theory of mind in deaf and hard of hearing children

Even when they have good language skills, many children with hearing loss lag several years behind hearing children in the ability to grasp beliefs of others. The researchers sought to determine whether this lag results from difficulty with the verbal demands of tasks or from conceptual delays. The researchers related children's performance on a nonverbal theory of mind task to their scores on verbal aptitude tests. Twelve French children (average age about 10 years) with severe to profound hearing loss and 12 French hearing children (average about 7 years) were evaluated. The children with hearing loss showed persistent difficulty with theory of mind tasks, even a nonverbal task, presenting results similar to those of hearing 6-year-olds. Also, the children with hearing loss showed a correlation between language level (lexical and morphosyntactic) and understanding of false beliefs. No such correlation was found in the hearing children.     

自闭症儿童心理理论能力中的情绪理解

情绪理解在个体社会交往中发挥着重要的作用,在社会交往上存在障碍的自闭症儿童的情绪理解能力理应是值得关注的研究领域。本文综述了以往对自闭症儿童心理理论能力的研究,从情绪与愿望、信念之间关系的角度对自闭症儿童基于愿望和信念的情绪理解力进行分析,并探讨了理解不同类别情绪时自闭症儿童表现不同的原因。     

Theory of mind development in deaf children: a nonverbal test of false-belief understanding

Our aim in this study was to investigate whether previous findings pointing to a delay in deaf children's theory of mind development are replicated when linguistic demands placed on the deaf child are minimized in a nonverbal version of standard false-belief tasks. Twenty-four prelingually deaf, orally trained children born of hearing parents were tested with both a verbal and a nonverbal version of a false-belief task. Neither the younger (range: 4 years 7 months-6 years 5 months) nor the older (range: 6 years 9 months-11 years 11 months) children of the final sample of 21 children performed above chance in the verbal task. The nonverbal task significantly facilitated performance in children of all ages. Despite this facilitation, we observed a developmental delay: only the older group performed significantly above chance in the nonverbal false-belief task, even though the younger children were at the average age when hearing children normally pass standard false-belief tests. We discuss these findings in light of the hypothesis that language development and conversational competence are crucial to the acquisition of a theory of mind.     

孤独症的心理理论研究及其临床应用

孤独症的心理理论与其言语、交往能力、社会功能以及想象有密切的关系。本文综述了以前有关孤独症心理理论损伤的一些实验研究 ,并从言语能力对孤独症心理理论表现的影响方面进行了重点讨论。最后着重从临床和应用的角度 ,探讨了与心理理论有关的孤独症早期检测和训练问题 ,并提出目前研究存在的问题和未来研究的方向     

Executive Functions in Young Children with Autism

The executive dysfunction hypothesis of autism has received support from most studies of older people with autism; however, studies of young children have produced mixed results. Two studies are presented that compare the performance of preschoolers with autism (mean = 51 months/4.3 years of age) to a control group matched on age, and verbal and nonverbal ability. The first study (n = 18 autism and 17 control) found no group differences in performance on 8 executive function tasks (A not B, Object Retrieval, A not B with Invisible Displacement, 3-Boxes Stationary and Scrambled, 6-Boxes Stationary and Scrambled, and Spatial Reversal), but did find that children with autism initiated fewer joint attention and social interaction behaviors. The second (longitudinal) study of a subset of the children (n = 13 autism and 11 control) from the first study found that neither groups' performance on Spatial Reversal changed significantly over the course of a year. The results of these studies pose a serious challenge to the executive dysfunction hypothesis of autism.     

连环漫画会话：提高自闭症患者社会理解能力的干预策略

连环漫画会话是Gray C.于1994年提出的一种视觉化的自闭症教育干预方法。它以心理理论的研究为依据,利用自闭症患者视觉学习能力相对突出的特点,设计了一套借助连环漫画实现患者与指导者的沟通表达和交流的程序技术,目的在于帮助患者解决日常生活中遇到的冲突和困难,从而提高患者的社会理解能力,增强社会交往的兴趣,减少不适当社会行为。有关实验研究表明,自闭症儿童能够理解漫画图示所要表达的信息,连环漫画会话具有良好的干预效果。     

Do you see what I mean? Shared reference in non-native, early signing deaf children

A group of non-native, early signing deaf children between the ages of 7 and 11 years were tested on a referential communication task. A group of hearing children matched for sex and mental and chronological age were also included in the study. The aim was to study the deaf children's ability to take another persons perspective in a task that resembled a real-life communicative situation to a higher extent than the standard theory of mind (ToM) tasks. A further aim was to investigate the possible importance of a number of background variables such as mental and chronological age, working memory, and false-belief attribution. Results show that the hearing children outperformed the deaf children on the referential communication task and that results were highly correlated with both chronological and mental age, as well as with working memory. There was a positive, but not significant, correlation between false belief and success on the referential communication task. This is an indication that the two tasks tap different abilities and that false belief might be necessary, but not sufficient in order to be skilled in the art of referential communication. The possible role of working memory in the referential communication task is also discussed. The results support the hypothesis of the importance of early talk about mental states for the later development of ToM abilities.     

试论心理理论的获得与使用

20世纪80年代以来,心理理论一直是发展心理学领域的一个热门话题.研究者们从多种不同的角度对其进行了探讨.除了对心理理论的获得与个体差异的研究外,有些研究者也开始关注有关心理理论使用方面的问题,这些研究者发现获得了心理理论的个体在问题解决过程中并不一定就会去使用这一能力;而且不同的个体在如何使用心理理论能力方面也存在着差异.     

Exploration of the autistic child's theory of mind: knowledge, belief, and communication

26 autistic children with mental ages of 3-13 years were tested on 3 tasks that are within the capability of 3- or 4-year-old normal children. The first task tested understanding of a mistaken belief. Children were shown a typical box of a certain brand of sweets, and they all thought that it contained that kind of sweet. To their surprise, however, the box contained something else. Yet, only 4 out of the 26 autistic children were able to anticipate that another child in the same situation would make the same mistake. In contrast, all but 1 of 12 children with specific language impairment, matched for mental age, understood that others would be as misled as they had been themselves. The autistic children were also tested for their ability to infer knowledge about the content of a container from having or not having looked inside. All 4 children who had passed the belief task and an additional 4 performed perfectly, but most failed. The third task assessed children's pragmatic ability to adjust their answers to provide new rather than repeat old information. Here, too, most autistic children seemed unable to reliably make the correct adjustment. These results confirm the hypothesis that autistic children have profound difficulty in taking account of mental states.     

Imitation and Pantomime in High-Functioning Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders

A study was designed to test 2 alternative hypotheses—a symbolic hypothesis and an executive function hypothesis—for the imitation and pantomime deficits found in previous studies of autism. The subjects were 17 adolescent high-functioning subjects with autism spectrum disorders and 15 clinical comparison subjects who were matched on chronological age and verbal IQ. Meaning and sequence were manipulated in facial and manual imitation tasks. Sequence was manipulated in the pantomime and control tasks. Recognition memory and motor control tasks were matched to the experimental tasks. The results provided no support for the symbolic deficit hypothesis; meaning aided rather than hindered the performance of the group with autism. Partial support for the executive deficit hypothesis was found. There were no group differences on motor control tasks, and few on the memory control tasks, arguing against deficits in motor initiation, basic motor coordination, or visual recognition memory.     

提高自闭症幼儿装扮游戏能力的教育干预研究

为探索提高自闭症幼儿装扮游戏能力的教育干预方法和途径 ,采用了变异 -个案研究法 ,对两名实际年龄为 5 9、6 1个月 ,心理年龄为 30、31个月的自闭症幼儿 ,进行了为时 11个月的教育干预研究。通过量和质的分析检验 ,证明了教育干预的有效性。结果表明 ,教师和家长以及同伴与自闭症幼儿能每天在一起进行 30 - 40分钟的装扮游戏 ,并在这个过程中给予积极的情感支持和鼓励行为 ,能有效地促进自闭症幼儿装扮游戏水平的提高。