Thought-bubbles help children with autism acquire an alternative to a theory of mind.
Children with autism have specific difficulties understanding complex mental states like thought, belief, and false belief and their effects on behaviour. Such children benefit from focused teaching, where beliefs are likened to photographs-in-the-head. Here two studies, one with seven participants and one with 10, tested a picturein-the-head strategy for dealing with thoughts and behaviour by teaching children with autism about cartoon thought-bubbles as a device for representing such mental states. This prosthetic device led children with autism to pass not only false belief tests, but also related theory of mind tests. These results confirm earlier findings of the efficacy of picture-in-the-head teaching about mental states, but go further in showing that thought-bubble training more easily extends to children's understanding of thoughts (not just behaviour) and to enhanced performance on several transfer tasks. Thought-bubbles provide a theoretically interesting as well as an especially easy and effective teaching technique.
Wellman
Henry M
HM
The University of Michigan, Center for Human Growth & Development, 300 N. Ingalls Building, 10th Level, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-0406, USA. hmw@umich.edu
Baron-Cohen
Simon
S
Caswell
Robert
R
Gomez
Juan Carlos
JC
Swettenham
John
J
Toye
Eleanor
E
Lagattuta
Kristin
K
D000293:Adolescent; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002359:Cartoons as Topic; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological