Autism & Theory of Mind (ToM)
Links between social skills,
conversation, and ToM in highfunctioning autistic children
CANDIDA PETERSON
What is Theory of Mind?
ƒ Social intelligence, or our
everyday understanding of people
as mindful beings
ƒ Includes the ability to understand and predict
counterintuitive behavior (e.g., stemming from
people’s false or mistaken beliefs)
How Do We Measure ToM?
Standard inferential false belief tests
* Child needs to predict the actions or thoughts of
actors with mistaken beliefs
*The only way to pass is with a ToM
The Litmus Test # 1
Changed Location
False Belief
ƒ “ Where will she look
for her marble?”
ƒ ToM = Where she first
put it
The Litmus Test # 2
MISLEADING
BOX
ƒ Really contains
clothes pegs:
ƒ “What will X think is
in it?”
ƒ ToM = “Crayons”
How Does ToM Develop?
ƒ Dramatic conceptual change to ToM by age 5
years in typical children
ƒ Autism is linked with severely delayed
ToM (so are blindness and deafness)
ƒ “Mindblindness” (low ToM) in autism
may last into adolescence/adulthood
Two Theories of ToM
ƒ NATIVIST
MODEL
ƒ Neurobiological
brain maturation
of genetically
programmed ToM
module
ƒ NURTURE MODEL
ToM is learned through
social and cultural
experiences and is
modifiable
“Nature” Model
ToM emerges automatically in healthy brains
via a genetically programmed ToM module:
“The computational capacity to represent
mental states has an innate neurological
basis. In the autistic child neurological
damage to a circumscribed system of the
brain has occurred” (Leslie & Thaiss, 1992, p.110)
Nurture Model
ƒ ToM is Acquired by Social/Cultural
Experience
ƒ “The process of learning to think is a process of
skill acquisition, the social environment supplies
both the initial reason to acquire this skill and the
environmental support to enable its
acquisition”(Garfield, Peterson & Perry, 2001)
ƒ “Conversational discourse can be a vehicle for
conveying the fact that people differ in their point
of view…In the course of conversation, children
…are often prompted to imagine the world from
another person’s perspective” (Harris, 2005,p. 81)
Links of ToM with Social Skills in
Typical Children
ƒ “20 years of research shows
that ToM transforms, and is
transformed by, children’s close
relationships”
ƒ (Hughes & Leekam, 2004)
Links of ToM with Social Skills in
Typical Children
ƒ POSITIVE LINKS
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Social skills
Communication skill
Peer popularity
Empathy
Conflict resolution
Shared imagination &
reminiscence
ƒ NEGATIVE LINKS
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Sensitivity to criticism
Deception
Teasing
Ring-leader bullying
What about Autistic Children?
ƒ ONE EARLIER STUDY: Frith, Happe & Siddons (1994)
obtained ToM scores & teachers’ & parents’ social skills ratings
on 24 autistic teenagers
ƒ 8 passed ToM: Of these, 3 ( 37%) had good
interactive social skills but 5 ( 62 %) had little
or no social skill
ƒ Typical preschoolers had higher social skills
than autistic children even without passing ToM
The Present Study
• AIM: To further study if peer interaction skills are linked
with ToM in autism using teacher ratings on new scales
different from those of Frith and Happe (1994)
• MEASURES:
– 3 false belief tests of ToM plus
– Teacher ratings of peer social skills ( 3 scales)
– Social maturity (newly devised measure)
– Watson et al.’s single item (“How socially skilled is this child)
– Peer popularity
The Present Sample
ƒ Autistic children from special education
units in Brisbane Queensland along with
typically developing preschoolers matched
on (ToM) false belief to children in the
autism group
Results
ƒ As in much past research autistic children
aged 6 to 13 years had serious problems
with the standard ToM tests of false belief
understanding
ƒ Despite being chronologically older, the
children with autism also scored lower than
the typical preschoolers on social maturity
and each of the other social skills measures
Results Cont.
ƒ In line with Frith et al’s findings, there was no
significant association between the autistic
children’s ToM performance on standard false
belief tasks and any aspect of their social
maturity or social skills on teacher rating scales
ƒ While requiring further empirical confirmation, there was
a non-significant trend in the data suggesting the value of
pretend play as a possible booster of social skills for
children with autism
Interpretations
ƒ In the autism group, social maturity is
low even when ToM scores are high
ƒ But for typical preschoolers, those who
pass ToM have greater social maturity
than those who fail
ƒ (Similar results apply to overall social skills
scores)
Interpretations Cont.
ƒ Results are consistent with Frith et al in
suggesting that autistic children’s social
skills benefit less than typicals’ from ToM
ƒ Perhaps some autistic children learn to pass
FB tests of ToM by “hacking” without any
true understanding of others’ minds
ƒ Perhaps ToM is not enough. Skilled peer
interaction may require theory,
motivation AND lots of practice
A Social-Conversational
Explanation
Children learn about others’ minds by
talking & playing with them and this
spirals into more effective social skills,
more enjoyable interaction and lifelong
ToM gains; Autistic symptom triad curtails
these beneficial social inputs
Surprise Results & Speculations
ƒ Like FB, frequency of pretend play predicted
social maturity for typicals (p = .02) but not for
those with autism.
ƒ But, for those with autism, pretend play is linked
with verbal ability and ToM
ƒ ? Perhaps language training, and/or
pretend play training, could be used to
boost ToM?
ƒ Would combined training benefit social
maturity in autism?
Future Directions
ƒ New 5-Step ToM scale ( Peterson,
Wellman & Liu, 2005) enables
developmental assessment of stages in ToM
mastery
ƒ Our ongoing research: Social skills, social
maturity and stages in ToM for children
with autism
Conclusions
ƒ No simple link between ToM and social skill in autistic
children
ƒ Even exceptional autistic children who master ToM
continue to have problems with peer social relations
ƒ Implications for social skills education and theories of
ToM and of autism
ƒ Nativist models challenged (unless “hacking”
presumed)
ƒ Nurture models may explain results if interactive
social skills depend upon, but go beyond ToM
mastery