title: Social communication in children with autism: the relationship between theory of mind and discourse development.
abstract: This longitudinal study investigated the developmental trajectory of discourse skills and theory of mind in 57 children with autism. Children were tested at two time points spaced 1 year apart. Each year they provided a natural language sample while interacting with one parent, and were given standardized vocabulary measures and a developmentally sequenced battery of theory of mind tasks. The language samples were coded for conversational skills, specifically the child's use of topic-related contingent utterances. Children with autism made significant gains over 1 year in the ability to maintain a topic of discourse. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that theory of mind skills contributed unique variance to individual differences in contingent discourse ability and vice versa, when measured concurrently; however, they did not predict longitudinal changes. The findings offer some empirical support for the hypothesis that theory of mind is linked to communicative competence in children with autism.
authors.affiliation: Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA.
authors.forename: Courtney M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Hale
authors.forename: Helen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tager-Flusberg
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D003147:Communication Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D033182:Intention; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007804:Language Development; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D007807:Language Tests; D012938:Social Perception