Understanding atypical emotions among children with autism.
Autistic kids can explain odd feelings as well as peers, so start social training with atypical examples to unlock hidden mind-reading skills.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked autistic and non-autistic kids why people feel happy, sad, or scared.
They also asked about odd feelings, like smiling after losing a game.
Kids gave spoken reasons; the study compared answers across groups.
What they found
Autistic kids gave fewer "mind" reasons for normal feelings than peers.
Yet they explained odd feelings just as well as age-matched controls.
The skill is there; it just shows up in unusual cases.
How this fits with other research
McHugh et al. (2011) later taught autistic kids to name feelings from short clips.
All three learners then labeled new feelings without extra teaching.
Their work shows you can train the same skill the 2000 paper says is present.
Feldman et al. (1999) found young autistic children also struggle to recognize faces.
Together the studies hint: the social cue is missed, not the mind-reading muscle.
Why it matters
You no longer need to assume "mind blindness."
Start social-skills lessons with weird, unexpected feelings first.
Once the client succeeds, bridge to everyday examples.
Use short videos and ask "Why does she feel that?"
The skill is in there; we just need the right key to unlock it.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with autism are said to be poor mind readers: They have a limited understanding of the role that mental states play in determining emotions and behavior. In this research, 23 high-functioning children from the autistic spectrum (M age 9 years 3 months), 42 6-year-old controls, and 43 10-year-old controls were presented with six emotion-evoking stories and they were asked to explain protagonists' typical and atypical emotions. In the case of typical emotions, as expected on the basis of the mindblind hypothesis, children from the autistic spectrum gave few mental state explanations, referring to fewer than even the 6-year-old control group. However, in the case of atypical emotions, the autistic group performed as well as the 10-year-old controls. Their explanations for the atypical emotions demonstrate that children from the autistic spectrum indeed have the capacity to mind read (with respect to both desires and beliefs), although they do not always use this capacity in the same way as normally developing children. It is argued that the mind-reading capacity of high-functioning children from the autistic spectrum might be basically intact; unused in everyday circumstances but not necessarily defective.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2000 · doi:10.1023/a:1005540417877