Brief Report: An Independent Replication and Extension of Psychometric Evidence Supporting the Theory of Mind Inventory.

Faso et al. (2016) ran an independent check of the Theory of Mind Inventory. Parents of preschool and early elementary kids filled out the 45-item checklist.

Half the families had a child with autism. The rest were typically developing. The team looked at whether scores lined up with age and diagnosis.

The inventory held up. Internal consistency was high. Kids with autism scored lower than same-age peers.

Scores also rose with age in both groups. The pattern matched earlier direct tasks, but used parent report instead.

Brent et al. (2004) showed that advanced theory-of-mind tasks measure partly separate skills. Their lab tasks caught different angles of social thinking. Faso et al. (2016) now shows one parent form can capture the same idea in less time.

Falcomata et al. (2012) built a comic-strip task for 4- to 8-year-olds with ASD. It caught intention-understanding deficits in about ten minutes. The ToMI gives a similar quick flag, but parents do the rating instead of the child.

Sáez-Suanes et al. (2023) just repeated the same replication trick with the Autism Impact Measure. Both papers tell clinicians: if a caregiver tool survives an independent test, you can trust it for daily use.

You now have a five-minute parent form that reliably spots theory-of-mind delays in young clients. Use it during intake or before treatment planning. If the score is low, add perspective-taking goals and track change every few months. No extra clinic time, no child frustration.