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The recognition of attitude conveyed by utterance: A study of preschool and autistic children
Author(s) -
Roth Daniel,
Leslie Alan M.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-835x.1991.tb00880.x
Subject(s) - psychology , utterance , comprehension , autism , cognition , cognitive development , theory of mind , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , competence (human resources) , autistic spectrum , similarity (geometry) , linguistics , social psychology , philosophy , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science , image (mathematics)
A growing body of work shows that autistic children and adolescents have very limited understanding of propositional attitudes. One aspect of this is their typical failure to employ a concept of belief. In normal children the concept of belief seems to undergo an important development around age 4 years. The question naturally arises whether autistic impairment comprises simply a 3‐year‐old level of conceptual competence or whether their similarity to 3‐year‐olds in performance on certain theory of mind tasks masks underlying differences at the level of cognitive mechanism. We present data which show that in following a conversational interaction, normal 5‐year‐olds display a sophisticated understanding of the beliefs of the protagonists. Three‐year‐olds showed a much more limited comprehension but were able to attribute propositional attitudes. Our autistic adolescents did not display even this limited understanding of the conversational situation. We interpret our findings in terms of the metarepresentational theory of autism and point out the theoretical importance of a comparative approach to understanding normal cognitive development.