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Thursday, May 15, 2008
Champagne Terrace/Bordeaux (Novotel London West)
Background: Evidence from typical development and neuroimaging studies suggests that level 2 visual perspective taking – the knowledge that different people may see the same thing differently – is a mentalising task. Thus, we would expect children with autism, who fail typical mentalising tasks like false belief, to perform poorly on level 2 visual perspective taking as well. However, prior data on this issue is mixed, with some reports of success in autism.
Objectives: The aim of the study was to determine if children with autism have specific difficulties with level 2 visual perspective taking, in relation to their verbal and spatial abilities.
Methods: We tested a group of 23 young autistic children and three groups of typical children on a simple level 2 visual perspective task and a closely matched mental rotation task. Groups were matched on either verbal or spatial abilities.
Results: The data show that autistic children have difficulty with visual perspective taking but not mental rotation, relative to typical children. Furthermore, performance on the level 2 visual perspective taking task correlated with theory of mind performance.
Conclusions: These results support the hypothesis that children with autism have specific difficulties with mentalising tasks, and demonstrate the value of using visual perspective taking tasks, which have low verbal requirements and close control conditions, to assess mentalising abilities.
Objectives: The aim of the study was to determine if children with autism have specific difficulties with level 2 visual perspective taking, in relation to their verbal and spatial abilities.
Methods: We tested a group of 23 young autistic children and three groups of typical children on a simple level 2 visual perspective task and a closely matched mental rotation task. Groups were matched on either verbal or spatial abilities.
Results: The data show that autistic children have difficulty with visual perspective taking but not mental rotation, relative to typical children. Furthermore, performance on the level 2 visual perspective taking task correlated with theory of mind performance.
Conclusions: These results support the hypothesis that children with autism have specific difficulties with mentalising tasks, and demonstrate the value of using visual perspective taking tasks, which have low verbal requirements and close control conditions, to assess mentalising abilities.