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Belief Term Development in Children with Autism, Asperger Syndrome, Specific Language Impairment, and Normal Development: Links to Theory of Mind Development
Author(s) -
Ziatas Kathryn,
Durkin Kevin,
Pratt Chris
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/1469-7610.00374
Subject(s) - psychology , autism , theory of mind , comprehension , asperger syndrome , false belief , developmental psychology , language development , mind blindness , term (time) , high functioning autism , cognitive psychology , autism spectrum disorder , cognition , psychiatry , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
This study examined the relationship between the development of theory of mind and the development of the belief terms think, know, and guess. Children with autism and Asperger syndrome, matched to children with specific language impairment and normal development, completed false belief, belief term comprehension, and belief term expression tasks. The autistic group's performance on the false belief, belief term comprehension, and belief term expression tasks was significantly poorer than that of the Asperger, language impaired, and normal groups. Across groups an association was found between false belief and belief term performance. Results support a growing body of literature demonstrating links between the development of theory of mind and communicative competence.