Using tests of false belief with children with autism: how valid and reliable are they?
Two false-belief tasks give a reliable snapshot of theory-of-mind in autistic children.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team gave 40 autistic kids two classic false-belief tests.
One test used a deceptive candy box. The other used three boxes to hide a ball.
They repeated the tests two weeks later to see if scores stayed the same.
What they found
Kids answered the same way 85-a large share of the time.
Scores on the two tests lined up well.
This means the tasks give a stable picture of a child’s theory-of-mind level.
How this fits with other research
McKenzie et al. (2012) also found good match between two brief screens for ID.
Like our paper, they showed two quick tools can flag who needs deeper testing.
Chou et al. (2007) took a different path. They built DisDAT to capture unique distress cues instead of using one-size-fits-all items.
Both studies agree: either use two standard tasks or tailor the tool to the child.
Why it matters
You can feel safe giving two false-belief tasks and trusting the result.
If both pass, the child likely understands hidden thoughts.
If both fail, you have solid data to start theory-of-mind training.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Twenty-two children with autism were given four tests of false belief understanding: the Sally-Anne task, two variants of the deceptive box task, and the three boxes task. The overall consistency of the children's performance was high, 77 percent of the participants either passing or failing all of the tasks. The convergent validity (across-task consistency) of the deceptive box and the three boxes paradigms was high, and the convergent validity of the three boxes and Sally-Anne tasks was also acceptable. However, a weaker level of convergent validity was found for the deceptive box and Sally-Anne tasks, suggesting that these paradigms test slightly different aspects of cognition. The reliability (within-child consistency) of the children's performances across two versions of the deceptive box task was high. These findings are discussed in terms of their practical implications for practitioners and researchers.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2001 · doi:10.1177/1362361301005002004