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Preverbal children with autism understand the intentions of others
Author(s) -
Aldridge Michelle A.,
Stone Kari R.,
Sweeney Melissa H.,
Bower T.G.R.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
developmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.801
H-Index - 127
eISSN - 1467-7687
pISSN - 1363-755X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-7687.00123
Subject(s) - autism , imitation , psychology , theory of mind , typically developing , nonverbal communication , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , cognition , social psychology , neuroscience
There is a ‘theory of mind’ theory of autism. Meltzoff has recently developed a procedure that gives a nonverbal assessment of ‘theory of mind’. A group of children with autism and a matched control group of normally developing infants were given three of Meltzoff’s tasks and three conventional, gestural imitation tasks. The children with autism showed the expected deficits on gestural imitation, but were significantly better than the normally developing infants on the Meltzoff tasks. The implications of these results for a number of theoretical issues are discussed.