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Do children with autism find it difficult to offer alternative interpretations to ambiguous figures?
Author(s) -
Ropar Danielle,
Mitchell Peter,
Ackroyd Katie
Publication year - 2003
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 - 10.1348/026151003322277766
Subject(s) - psychology , autism , ambiguity , theory of mind , mental age , test (biology) , false belief , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , typically developing , cognition , linguistics , paleontology , philosophy , neuroscience , biology
Previous research suggests that the ability to reverse ambiguous figures may be related to an understanding of one's own and others' mental states. We can infer from these findings that individuals who have difficulty representing mental states, such as those with autism, may also have difficulty reversing ambiguous figures. The results from our study, however, showed that a majority of those with autism easily succeeded in making alternative interpretations despite many making errors in tests of false belief. Many also had difficulty acknowledging that a less informed person would interpret a non‐descript portion of a drawing differently than themselves. Comparison participants with moderate learning disabilities, who had a similar intellectual profile, generally performed well on the theory of mind tests and a majority made alternative interpretations of ambiguous figures. Typically developing children aged 7 and 8 years performed well on all tests. The ambiguity test does not require participants to understand that representations are open to revision, unlike theory of mind tests, and this might explain their good performance.