Understanding of thought bubbles as mental representations in children with autism: implications for theory of mind.
Swap the classic false-belief story for a thought-bubble picture test to spot theory-of-mind skills in minimally verbal autistic preschoolers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Kerr et al. (2004) showed thought bubbles to autistic and typical preschoolers. They wanted to see if kids could see a bubble as a picture of what someone is thinking.
Most children failed the classic false-belief test. The team then gave a simpler task: match a thought bubble to a picture that did not match reality.
What they found
Even the kids who failed the false-belief task could pick the thought bubble that showed a wrong belief. Autistic and typical children did the same.
The bubble task let minimally verbal autistic preschoolers show they understood mental states.
How this fits with other research
DeRoma et al. (2004) looked at the same age group and also saw poor false-belief scores. They blamed reasoning problems, not missing belief knowledge. The two studies seem to clash, but the tasks differ: one used extra reasoning steps, the other used simple picture matching.
Courchesne et al. (2019) later showed that strength-based tests help minimally verbal autistic preschoolers reveal their real skills. Sharyn’s thought bubbles are an early example of this idea.
Shearn et al. (1997) tried teaching theory-of-mind tasks and saw no conversation gains. Sharyn’s work hints why: the kids already had the knowledge; they just needed a better way to show it.
Why it matters
If a child fails a false-belief task, do not assume they lack theory of mind. Try a thought-bubble or picture match test first. These tools take less language and can guide you to true starting points for social-skills teaching. You save time and avoid underestimating the child.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Standard false belief tasks indicate that normally developing children do not fully develop a theory of mind until the age of 4 years and that children with autism have an impaired theory of mind. Recent evidence, however, suggests that children as young as 3 years of age understand that thought bubbles depict mental representations and that these can be false. Twelve normally developing children and 11 children with autism were tested on a standard false belief task and a number of tasks that employed thought bubbles to represent mental states. While the majority of normally developing children and children with autism failed the standard false belief task, they understood that (i) thought bubbles represent thought, (ii) thought bubbles can be used to infer an unknown reality, (iii) thoughts can be different, and (iv) thoughts can be false. These results indicate that autistic children with a relatively low verbal mental age may be capable of understanding mental representations.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2004 · doi:10.1007/s10803-004-5285-z