title: Brief report: assessment of the social-emotional profile in children with autism spectrum disorders using a novel comic strip task.
abstract: This study investigated whether the novel Comic Strip Task (CST) could be used to detect Theory-of-Mind impairments (ToM) in 4- to 8-year-old children with high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Twelve children with either high-functioning autism or Asperger's Disorder and 12 typically-developing children completed the 21-item measure. The overall CST demonstrated moderate internal consistency but the Belief-understanding subscale was excluded from the test due to poor reliability. As predicted, the ASD group performed significantly more poorly than controls on the overall 2-subscale CST and on the intention-understanding subscale. No group differences were found in emotion-understanding subscale performance. Controlling for age, verbal ability was positively correlated with overall CST performance across groups. CST performance in the ASD group positively correlated with parent-reports of communication difficulties. Despite some limitations with the belief-understanding subscale, the CST has promising psychometric features warranting further development of this measure.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Developmental Psychiatry and Psychology, School of Psychology and Psychology, Monash University, 270 Ferntree Gully Road, Notting Hill, VIC 3168, Australia.
authors.forename: Carmel S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Sivaratnam
authors.forename: Kim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cornish
authors.forename: Kylie M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Gray
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Howlin
authors.forename: Nicole J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Rinehart
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D056345:Theory of Mind