Performance of children with autism spectrum disorder on advanced theory of mind tasks.
Different advanced ToM tasks measure different skills, so choose your assessment tool with care.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Brent et al. (2004) gave three advanced theory-of-mind tasks to children with autism. The tasks were Strange Stories, Cartoon jokes, and Reading the Mind in the Eyes. The team wanted to see if the three tests measured the same skill or different skills.
What they found
The children did not score the same across the three tasks. Good scores on one test did not guarantee good scores on another. The authors say the tasks tap partly separate social-cognitive skills.
How this fits with other research
Falcomata et al. (2012) later built a simpler Comic Strip Task for younger kids and also found uneven intention-understanding scores, backing the idea that ToM is not one lump.
Beaumont et al. (2008) created a computerized test called ATOMIC for children with Asperger syndrome. They again showed separate, measurable ToM parts, extending the 2004 call for varied tools.
Lam (2013) looked at Chinese preschoolers and found theory-of-mind weak while central coherence was intact, confirming you must test each cognitive piece on its own.
Why it matters
When you assess social cognition, pick the tool that matches the exact skill you need. If you want to track false belief, use false-belief tasks. If you want emotion recognition, use eyes or film tasks. Do not assume one good score means the child is strong in all social areas.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Although a number of advanced theory of mind tasks have been developed, there is sparse information on whether performance on different tasks is associated. The study examined the performance of 20 high-functioning 6- to 12-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder and 20 controls on three high-level theory of mind tasks: Strange Stories, Cartoons and the children's version of the Eyes task. The pattern of findings suggests that the three tasks may share differing, non-specific, information-processing requirements in addition to tapping any putative mentalizing ability. They may also indicate a degree of dissociation between social-cognitive and social-perceptual or affective components of the mentalizing system.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2004 · doi:10.1177/1362361304045217