Open Access
Does the Autistic Child Have a''Theory of Mind''? Cognition
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
In this paper, a new model of metarepresentational development was used to predict a cognitive deficit in children with autism, which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism.Abstract:
Abstract We 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. One of the manifestations of a basic metarepresentational capacity is a ‘theory of mind’. We have reason to believe that autistic children lack such a ‘theory’. If this were so, then they would be unable to impute beliefs to others and to predict their behaviour. This hypothesis was tested using Wimmer and Perner's puppet play paradigm. Normal children and those with Down's syndrome were used as controls for a group of autistic children. Even though the mental age of the autistic children was higher than that of the controls, they alone failed to impute beliefs to others. Thus the dysfunction we have postulated and demonstrated is independent of mental retardation and specific to autism.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The Brain's Default Network Anatomy, Function, and Relevance to Disease
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised: a revised version of a diagnostic interview for caregivers of individuals with possible pervasive 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.
Journal ArticleDOI
Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false belief.
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
The empathy quotient: an investigation of adults with Asperger syndrome or high functioning autism, and normal sex differences.
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind."
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.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed
Arnold M. Cooper,Robert Michels +1 more
Journal ArticleDOI
Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception.
Heinz Wimmer,Josef Perner +1 more
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.
Book
The Child's Conception of Space
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
Severe impairments of social interaction and associated abnormalities in children : epidemiology and classification
Lorna Wing,Judith Gould +1 more
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.