Performance of Children and Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome or High-functioning Autism on Advanced Theory of Mind Tasks

• Published in: Journal of autism and developmental disorders Vol. 38; no. 6; pp. 1112 - 1123
• Main Authors: Kaland, Nils, Callesen, Kirsten, Møller-Nielsen, Annette, Mortensen, Erik Lykke, Smith, Lars
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.07.2008; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescents; Adult; Asperger Syndrome; Asperger Syndrome - diagnosis; Asperger Syndrome - psychology; Asperger's syndrome; Attention; Autism; Autistic Disorder - diagnosis; Autistic Disorder - psychology; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child and School Psychology; Child clinical studies; Children; Cognitive Processes; Comparative Analysis; Concept Formation; Developmental disorders; Emotions; Facial Expression; Female; Humans; Infantile autism; Inferences; Intelligence; Interpersonal Communication; Male; Medical sciences; Mental Age; Neuropsychological Tests; Neurosciences; Nonverbal Communication; Original Paper; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Pediatrics; Performance measurement; Personal Construct Theory; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Public Health; Reading; Semantics; Theory of Mind; Thinking Skills; Visual Stimuli; Autism spectrum disorders; Social-cognitive; Asperger syndrome; Perceptual-affective; Eyes Task; Story tasks; Human; Affect affectivity; Developmental disorder; Theory of mind; Experimental study; Social cognition; Pervasive developmental disorder; School age; Adolescent; Perception; Performance; Child; High functioning autism
• ISSN: 0162-3257; 1573-3432
• DOI: 10.1007/s10803-007-0496-8

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.