Performance of children and adolescents with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism on advanced theory of mind tasks.
Although a number of advanced theory of mind tasks have been developed, there is a dearth of information on whether performances on different tasks are associated. The present study examined the performance of 21 children and adolescents with diagnoses of Asperger syndrome (AS) and 20 typically developing controls on three advanced theory of mind tasks: The Eyes Task, the Strange Stories, and the Stories from Everyday Life. The participants in the clinical group demonstrated lower performance than the controls on all the three tasks. The pattern of findings, however, indicates that these tasks may share different information-processing requirements in addition to tapping different mentalizing abilities.
Kaland
Nils
N
Faculty of Social Sciences, Lillehammer University College, Postboks 952, 2604 Lillehammer, Norway. nils@kaland.net
Callesen
Kirsten
K
Møller-Nielsen
Annette
A
Mortensen
Erik Lykke
EL
Smith
Lars
L
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D020817:Asperger Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D003210:Concept Formation; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics