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Journal Article•DOI•

Does the autistic child have a theory of mind

Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan M. Leslie, Uta Frith
01 Oct 1985-Cognition (Elsevier)-Vol. 21, Iss: 1, pp 37-46
TL;DR: A new model of metarepresentational development is used to predict a cognitive deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism.
About: This article is published in Cognition.The article was published on 1985-10-01 and is currently open access. It has received 6017 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Mind-blindness & Autism.

Summary (2 min read)

Jump to: [1. Introduction] – [2. I Subjects] – [2.2 Procedure] – [3. Results] and [4. Discussion]

1. Introduction

  • The ability to make inferences about what other people believe to be the case in a given situation allows one to predict what they will do.
  • In order to succeed on the task the child has to be aware that different people can have different beliefs about a situation.

2. I Subjects

  • The 20 autistic children had been diagnosed according to established criteria (Rutter, 1978) .
  • In addition there were 14 Down's Syndrome and 27 clinically normal preschool children.
  • The autistic group's mean mental age (MA) was not only higher than that of the Down's Syndrome group on a non-verbal scale, but also on the more conservative measure of a verbal scale.
  • Thus, the autistic group was of a relatively high mean IQ of 82 (derived from non-verbal MA), mostly in the average and borderline range, i.e. 70 to 108, with only one subject scoring less than 70.

2.2 Procedure

  • The control questions are crucial to ensure that the child has both knowledge of the real current location of the object and an accurate memory of the previous location.
  • There is no reason to believe that the three questions differ from each other in terms of psycholinguistic complexity, but of course the authors hypothesize that they differ in terms of conceptual complexity.
  • The standard scenario was repeated using a new location for the marble, so that now there were three different locations that the child could point at (basket, box and experimenter's pocket).
  • Correct responses to all three Questions for each of the two trials were therefore different.

3. Results

  • All 16 autistic children who failed pointed to where the marble really was, rather than to any of the other possible locations (p = .006, Binomial Test, one tailed).
  • The four autistic children who passed succeeded on both trials.
  • Comparison with data in Table 1 shows that these children were fairly average on all their available variables.
  • There were certainly other children of equal or greater MA and CA who gave incorrect responses.

4. Discussion

  • The authors conclude that the failure shown by the autistic children in their experiment constitutes a specific deficit.
  • It cannot be attributed to the general effects of mental retardation, since the more severely retarded Down's syndrome children performed close to ceiling on their task.
  • Thus the authors have demonstrated a cognitive deficit that is largely independent of general intellectual level and has the potential to explain both lack of pretend play and social impairment by 'virtue of a circumscribed cognitive failure.
  • This finding encourages us to continue with a theoretical framework (Leslie, 1984, to appear) which can specify the underlying connections between pretend play, theory of mind and social skills.
  • Deriving further testable predictions from such a model may lead to a new approach to the cognitive dysfunction in childhood autism (Frith, 1984) .

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Citations
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Journal Article•DOI•
The Brain's Default Network Anatomy, Function, and Relevance to Disease

[...]

Randy L. Buckner, Jessica R. Andrews-Hanna1, Daniel L. Schacter1•
Harvard University1
01 Mar 2008-Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
TL;DR: Past observations are synthesized to provide strong evidence that the default network is a specific, anatomically defined brain system preferentially active when individuals are not focused on the external environment, and for understanding mental disorders including autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease.
Abstract: Thirty years of brain imaging research has converged to define the brain’s default network—a novel and only recently appreciated brain system that participates in internal modes of cognition Here we synthesize past observations to provide strong evidence that the default network is a specific, anatomically defined brain system preferentially active when individuals are not focused on the external environment Analysis of connectional anatomy in the monkey supports the presence of an interconnected brain system Providing insight into function, the default network is active when individuals are engaged in internally focused tasks including autobiographical memory retrieval, envisioning the future, and conceiving the perspectives of others Probing the functional anatomy of the network in detail reveals that it is best understood as multiple interacting subsystems The medial temporal lobe subsystem provides information from prior experiences in the form of memories and associations that are the building blocks of mental simulation The medial prefrontal subsystem facilitates the flexible use of this information during the construction of self-relevant mental simulations These two subsystems converge on important nodes of integration including the posterior cingulate cortex The implications of these functional and anatomical observations are discussed in relation to possible adaptive roles of the default network for using past experiences to plan for the future, navigate social interactions, and maximize the utility of moments when we are not otherwise engaged by the external world We conclude by discussing the relevance of the default network for understanding mental disorders including autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease

8,448 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised: a revised version of a diagnostic interview for caregivers of individuals with possible pervasive developmental disorders

[...]

Catherine Lord1, Michael Rutter, Ann Le Couteur2•
University of Chicago1, Royal Free Hospital2
01 Oct 1994-Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
TL;DR: The revised interview has been reorganized, shortened, modified to be appropriate for children with mental ages from about 18 months into adulthood and linked to ICD-10 and DSM-IV criteria.
Abstract: Describes the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), a revision of the Autism Diagnostic Interview, a semistructured, investigator-based interview for caregivers of children and adults for whom autism or pervasive developmental disorders is a possible diagnosis. The revised interview has been reorganized, shortened, modified to be appropriate for children with mental ages from about 18 months into adulthood and linked to ICD-10 and DSM-IV criteria. Psychometric data are presented for a sample of preschool children.

8,264 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false belief.

[...]

Henry M. Wellman1, David R. Cross2, Julanne Watson1•
University of Michigan1, Texas Christian University2
01 May 2001-Child Development
TL;DR: A meta-analysis found that when organized into a systematic set of factors that vary across studies, false-belief results cluster systematically with the exception of only a few outliers, and is consistent with theoretical accounts that propose that understanding of belief, and, relatedly, understanding of mind, exhibit genuine conceptual change in the preschool years.
Abstract: Research on theory of mind increasingly encompasses apparently contradictory findings. In particular, in initial studies, older preschoolers consistently passed false-belief tasks—a so-called “definitive” test of mentalstate understanding—whereas younger children systematically erred. More recent studies, however, have found evidence of false-belief understanding in 3-year-olds or have demonstrated conditions that improve children’s performance. A meta-analysis was conducted ( N � 178 separate studies) to address the empirical inconsistencies and theoretical controversies. When organized into a systematic set of factors that vary across studies, false-belief results cluster systematically with the exception of only a few outliers. A combined model that included age, country of origin, and four task factors (e.g., whether the task objects were transformed in order to deceive the protagonist or not) yielded a multiple R of .74 and an R 2 of .55; thus, the model accounts for 55% of the variance in false-belief performance. Moreover, false-belief performance showed a consistent developmental pattern, even across various countries and various task manipulations: preschoolers went from below-chance performance to above-chance performance. The findings are inconsistent with early competence proposals that claim that developmental changes are due to tasks artifacts, and thus disappear in simpler, revised false-belief tasks; and are, instead, consistent with theoretical accounts that propose that understanding of belief, and, relatedly, understanding of mind, exhibit genuine conceptual change in the preschool years.

3,493 citations

Cites background from "Does the autistic child have a theo..."

  • ...False-belief performances provided an initial empirical test of this claim in that high-functioning children with autism who are able to reason competently about physical phenomena often fail false-belief tasks, whereas Down syndrome and other delayed populations of equivalent mental age often do not (e.g., Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985; for more comprehensive findings and comparisons, see Happe, 1995; Yirimiya, Erel, Shaked, ......

    [...]

Journal Article•DOI•
The empathy quotient: an investigation of adults with Asperger syndrome or high functioning autism, and normal sex differences.

[...]

Simon Baron-Cohen1, Sally Wheelwright1•
University of Cambridge1
01 Apr 2004-Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
TL;DR: The EQ reveals both a sex difference in empathy in the general population and an empathy deficit in Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism adults, who are reported clinically to have difficulties in empathy.
Abstract: Empathy is an essential part of normal social functioning, yet there are precious few instruments for measuring individual differences in this domain. In this article we review psychological theories of empathy and its measurement. Previous instruments that purport to measure this have not always focused purely on empathy. We report a new self-report questionnaire, the Empathy Quotient (EQ), for use with adults of normal intelligence. It contains 40 empathy items and 20 filler/control items. On each empathy item a person can score 2, 1, or 0, so the EQ has a maximum score of 80 and a minimum of zero. In Study 1 we employed the EQ with n = 90 adults (65 males, 25 females) with Asperger Syndrome (AS) or high-functioning autism (HFA), who are reported clinically to have difficulties in empathy. The adults with AS/HFA scored significantly lower on the EQ than n = 90 (65 males, 25 females) age-matched controls. Of the adults with AS/HFA, 81% scored equal to or fewer than 30 points out of 80, compared with only 12% of controls. In Study 2 we carried out a study of n = 197 adults from a general population, to test for previously reported sex differences (female superiority) in empathy. This confirmed that women scored significantly higher than men. The EQ reveals both a sex difference in empathy in the general population and an empathy deficit in AS/HFA.

3,430 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind."

[...]

Alan M. Leslie
01 Oct 1987-Psychological Review
TL;DR: In the second year of human life, a child's knowledge of a real situation is apparently contradicted and distorted by pretense as discussed by the authors, leading to the emergence of the ability to pretend.
Abstract: One of the major developments of the second year of human life is the emergence of the ability to pretend. A child's knowledge of a real situation is apparently contradicted and distorted by pretense. If, as generally assumed, the child is just beginning to construct a system for internally representing such knowledge, why is this system of representation not undermined by its use in both comprehending and producing pretense? In this article I present a theoretical analysis of the representational mechanism underlying this ability. This mechanism extends the power of the infant's existing capacity for (primary) representation, creating a capacity for metarepresentation. It is this, developing toward the end of infancy, that underlies the child's new abilities to pretend and to understand pretense in others. There is a striking isomorphism between the three fundamental forms of pretend play and three crucial logical properties of mental state expressions in language. This isomorphism points to a common underlying form of internal representation that is here called metarepresentation. A performance model, the decoupler, is outlined embodying ideas about how an infant might compute the complex function postulated to underlie pretend play. This model also reveals pretense as an early manifestation of the ability to understand mental states. Aspects of later preschool development, both normal and abnormal, are discussed in the light of the new model. This theory begins the task of characterizing the specific innate basis of our commonsense "theory of mind."

2,929 citations

Cites background or methods from "Does the autistic child have a theo..."

  • ...Where will the hider look for the chocolate? This simple test can be easily administered to young children and even to mentally retarded groups (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985)....

    [...]

  • ...…normal moral development (Wimmer, Gruber, & Perner, 1984), understanding the consequences of ignorance (Hogrefe et al., 1986) and of false belief (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985; Wimmer & Perner, 1983), the appearance-reality distinction (Flavell, 1985; Flavell, Flavell, & Green, 1983; Harris,…...

    [...]

  • ...This is shown by the 4-year-old predicting the behavioral consequences of someone having a false belief(Baron-Cohen et al., 1985; Wimmer & Perner, 1983)....

    [...]

  • ..., 1986) and of false belief(Baron-Cohen et al., 1985; Wimmer & Perner, 1983), the appearance-reality distinction (Flavell, 1985; Flavell, Flavell, & Green, 1983; Harris, Donnelly, Guz, & Ha-Watson, 1986), certain aspects of communication situations (Robinson & Whittaker, 1986), and in acquiring the language of mental state expressions (Bretherton &...

    [...]

  • ...This simple test can be easily administered to young children and even to mentally retarded groups (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985)....

    [...]

References
More filters
Journal Article•DOI•
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed

[...]

Arnold M. Cooper, Robert Michels
01 Jan 1981-American Journal of Psychiatry

7,863 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind

[...]

David Premack, Guy Woodruff1•
University of Pennsylvania1
01 Dec 1978-Behavioral and Brain Sciences
TL;DR: This paper showed an adult chimpanzee a series of videotaped scenes of a human actor struggling with a variety of problems, some of which were simple, such as bananas vertically or horizontally out of reach, behind a box, and so forth; others were more complex, involving an actor unable to extricate himself from a locked cage, shivering because of a malfunctioning heater, or unable to play a phonograph because it was unplugged.
Abstract: An individual has a theory of mind if he imputes mental states to himself and others. A system of inferences of this kind is properly viewed as a theory because such states are not directly observable, and the system can be used to make predictions about the behavior of others. As to the mental states the chimpanzee may infer, consider those inferred by our own species, for example, purpose or intention, as well as knowledge, belief, thinking, doubt, guessing, pretending, liking, and so forth. To determine whether or not the chimpanzee infers states of this kind, we showed an adult chimpanzee a series of videotaped scenes of a human actor struggling with a variety of problems. Some problems were simple, involving inaccessible food – bananas vertically or horizontally out of reach, behind a box, and so forth – as in the original Kohler problems; others were more complex, involving an actor unable to extricate himself from a locked cage, shivering because of a malfunctioning heater, or unable to play a phonograph because it was unplugged. With each videotape the chimpanzee was given several photographs, one a solution to the problem, such as a stick for the inaccessible bananas, a key for the locked up actor, a lit wick for the malfunctioning heater. The chimpanzee's consistent choice of the correct photographs can be understood by assuming that the animal recognized the videotape as representing a problem, understood the actor's purpose, and chose alternatives compatible with that purpose.

5,979 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception.

[...]

Heinz Wimmer1, Josef Perner2•
University of Salzburg1, University of Sussex2
01 Jan 1983-Cognition
TL;DR: A travelling salesman found himself spending the night at home with his wife when one of his trips was unexpectedly cancelled, and he leapt out from the bed, ran across the room and jumped out the window.

5,176 citations

"Does the autistic child have a theo..." refers background in this paper

  • ...A convincing demonstration that an explicit theory of mind is well within the capacity of the normal four-year-old has been’given by Wimmer and Perner (1983)....

    [...]

Book•
The Child's Conception of Space

[...]

Jean Piaget, Bärbel Inhelder, F. J. Langdon, J. L. Lunzer
17 May 1967
TL;DR: The nature of space, whether an innate idea, the outcome of experience in the external world, or an operational construction has long been a source of philosophical and speculative psychological discussion.
Abstract: The nature of space, whether an innate idea, the outcome of experience in the external world, or an operational construction has long been a source of philosophical and speculative psychological discussion. This book deals with the development of the child's notions about space.

2,677 citations

"Does the autistic child have a theo..." refers background in this paper

  • ...However, it is important to contrast the present task with traditional perceptual perspective-taking tasks, such as ‘line of sight’ or ‘three mountains’, where a child has to indicate what can be seen from another point of view (Hobson, 1982; Hughes & Donaldson, 1979; Piaget and Inhelder, 1956 )....

    [...]

Journal Article•DOI•
Severe impairments of social interaction and associated abnormalities in children : epidemiology and classification

[...]

Lorna Wing1, Judith Gould1•
Medical Research Council1
01 Mar 1979-Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
TL;DR: The prevalence, in children aged under 15, of severe impairments of social interaction, language abnormalities, and repetitive stereotyped behaviors was investigated in an area of London, and a system of classification based on quality ofsocial interaction was considered.
Abstract: The prevalence, in children aged under 15, of severe impairments of social interaction, language abnormalities, and repetitive stereotyped behaviors was investigated in an area of London. A “socially impaired” group (more than half of whom were severely retarded) and a comparison group of “sociable severely mentally retarded” children were identified. Mutism or echolalia, and repetitive stereotyped behaviors were found in almost all the socially impaired children, but to a less marked extent in a minority of the sociable severely retarded. Certain organic conditions were found more often in the socially impaired group. A subgroup with a history of Kanner's early childhood autism could be identified reliably but shared many abnormalities with other socially impaired children. The relationships between mental retardation, typical autism, and other conditions involving social impairment were discussed, and a system of classification based on quality of social interaction was considered.

2,476 citations

"Does the autistic child have a theo..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Wing and Gould (1979) in their epidemiological study of severely retarded autistic children bring out the range of socially impaired behaviour: from total withdrawal through passivity to repetitive pestering....

    [...]

  • ...Now, it is well known that autistic children, in addition to their social handicaps, also show a striking poverty of pretend play (Sigman & Ungerer, 1981; Ungerer & Sigman, 1981; Wing, Gould, Yeates, & Brierley, 1977; Wing & Gould, 1979)....

    [...]

Related Papers (5)
Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception.

[...]

01 Jan 1983-Cognition
Heinz Wimmer, Josef Perner
Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind

[...]

01 Dec 1978-Behavioral and Brain Sciences
David Premack, Guy Woodruff
Theory of mind.

[...]

06 Sep 2005-Current Biology
Chris D. Frith, Uta Frith
Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false belief.

[...]

01 May 2001-Child Development
Henry M. Wellman, David R. Cross, Julanne Watson
Mindblindness : An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind

[...]

24 Feb 1995
Simon Baron-Cohen
Frequently Asked Questions (5)
Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

The authors use a new model of metarepresentational development to predict a cognitive deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism. Thus the dysfunction the authors have postulated and demonstrated is independent of mental retardation and specific to autism. The authors have reason to believe that autistic children lack such a ‘ theory ’. 

Wing and Gould (1979) in their epidemiological study of severely retarded autistic children bring out the range of socially impaired behaviour: from total withdrawal through passivity to repetitive pestering. 

In a seminal paper, Premack and Woodruff (1978) defined theory of mind as the ability to impute mental states to oneself and to others. 

This impairment is part of the core feature of childhood autism, namely a profound disorder in understanding and coping with the social environment, regardless* 

if the authors suppose that autistic children lack second-order representations, then the authors can make sense of the association of impairments.