Thursday, May 20, 2010
Franklin Hall B Level 4 (Philadelphia Marriott Downtown)
2:00 PM
Background: Theory of mind in autism has been extensively investigated during the last thirty years. Children with autism are generally less good than control groups in theory of mind tasks (Yirmiya et al., 1998; Peterson, et al., 2005). Few studies have tried to examine the actual development of such understanding in autistic children and even less so longitudinally. Teaching social skills and comprehension of mental states are one of the privileged educational interventions in children with autism. Though, how to assess these interventions is still in debate.
Objectives: The aim of our research is to follow longitudinally the evolution of theory of mind comprehension in children with autism. Therefore, an instrument sensible enough to detect an eventual evolution in this comprehension was needed.
Methods: The testing was carried on in two sessions, separated by one year. Twenty eight children with autism (5- to 15-years old, M =10.6) participated in the study, all were evaluated with the Wechsler Nonverbal Scale, the E.CO.S.SE (the French equivalent of the TROG) and diagnosed with the DSM-IV-TR. The assessment on theory of mind was based on the French version of the ToM Storybooks (Blijd-Hoogewys et al., 2003). A control group of 14 children - paired on age and verbal ability - is tested for comparison.
Results: The first test reveals that children with autism are able to attribute simple mental state to story characters. They generally understand what a belief is as well as belief changing, but they are specially impaired in false belief tasks. The testing with the control group and the second test session is ongoing and will be discussed at the congress.
Objectives: The aim of our research is to follow longitudinally the evolution of theory of mind comprehension in children with autism. Therefore, an instrument sensible enough to detect an eventual evolution in this comprehension was needed.
Methods: The testing was carried on in two sessions, separated by one year. Twenty eight children with autism (5- to 15-years old, M =10.6) participated in the study, all were evaluated with the Wechsler Nonverbal Scale, the E.CO.S.SE (the French equivalent of the TROG) and diagnosed with the DSM-IV-TR. The assessment on theory of mind was based on the French version of the ToM Storybooks (Blijd-Hoogewys et al., 2003). A control group of 14 children - paired on age and verbal ability - is tested for comparison.
Results: The first test reveals that children with autism are able to attribute simple mental state to story characters. They generally understand what a belief is as well as belief changing, but they are specially impaired in false belief tasks. The testing with the control group and the second test session is ongoing and will be discussed at the congress.
Conclusions: Implications from this research are multiple. First, the sensibility of the ToM Storybooks to evaluate the evolution in children's theory of mind will be important for testing progress. Second, the evaluation of the developmental course of theory of mind understanding in children with autism is useful for those who try to understand this process and teach children in these abilities. Third, the comparison with control groups will confirm the specific difficulties of theory of mind comprehension in persons with an autism spectrum disorder. The results of our research will be useful for professionals and researchers.