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Emotional Role‐Taking Abilities of Children with a Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified
Author(s) -
Serra Marike,
Minderaa Ruud B.,
Geert Paul L. C.,
Jackson Alexander E.,
Althaus Monika,
Til Riet
Publication year - 1995
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/j.1469-7610.1995.tb01304.x
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , inference , theory of mind , cognitive psychology , cognition , psychiatry , philosophy , epistemology
Seven to 12‐year‐old children with a Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDDNOS) were compared with normal, healthy children of the same age and sex on three different emotional role‐taking tasks. In these tasks, children had to use person‐specific information to make an inference about another child's emotional reaction and behaviour, Significant differences were found between the PDDNOS group and control group: PDDNOS children performed worse on all three role‐taking tasks. However, the differences on one of these tasks could be completely explained by intelligence differences between the two groups. On the other tasks, differences could not or be partially explained by intelligence differences. The results of this study led to the formulation of a more specific hypothesis, namely that PDDNOS children might have problems interpreting social information when affectively charged background information has to be used.