scholarly journals Scaling of Early Social Cognitive Skills in Typically Developing Infants and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (11) ◽  
pp. 3988-4000
Author(s):  
Katherine Ellis ◽  
Philippa Lewington ◽  
Laurie Powis ◽  
Chris Oliver ◽  
Jane Waite ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Sequence ◽  
Shared Intentionality

Abstract We delineate the sequence that typically developing infants pass tasks that assess different early social cognitive skills considered precursors to theory-of-mind abilities. We compared this normative sequence to performance on these tasks in a group of autistic (AUT) children. 86 infants were administered seven tasks assessing intention reading and shared intentionality (Study 1). Infants responses followed a consistent developmental sequence, forming a four-stage scale. These tasks were administered to 21 AUT children (Study 2), who passed tasks in the same sequence. However, performance on tasks that required following others’ eye gaze and cooperating with others was delayed. Findings indicate that earlier-developing skills provide a foundation for later-developing skills, and difficulties in acquiring some early social cognitive skills in AUT children.

scholarly journals Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Can Attribute False Beliefs in a Spontaneous-Response Preferential-Looking Task

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Glenwright ◽  
Rose M. Scott ◽  
Elena Bilevicius ◽  
Megan Pronovost ◽  
Ana Hanlon-Dearman
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
False Belief Understanding ◽  
Children With Asd

An established body of literature indicates that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty understanding figurative language due to a deficit in theory of mind, or the ability to consider the beliefs of other people. Children with ASD tend to similarly fail traditional theory of mind tasks, which assess their ability to represent false beliefs. Our claim is, however, that these tasks involve cognitive processing demands that might mask false belief understanding because they require elicited responses. We examined whether children with ASD demonstrate false-belief understanding when tested with a spontaneous-response false belief task that measures children’s eye gaze durations. The two child participant groups were composed of 20 males with ASD (aged 3–9 years) and 20 typically developing males (aged 2–5 years) who were individually matched according to verbal mental age. Children with ASD and typically developing children listened to a change-of-location story accompanied by a book with matching and non-matching pictures. The final page showed the character searching for her object in a location that was either consistent or inconsistent with her belief. Both groups of children looked reliably longer at the belief-consistent picture, regardless of whether the character’s belief was true or false, though children with ASD were slower to do so. We suggest that a spontaneous-response assessment technique can potentially reveal figurative language comprehension in children with ASD in future research.

scholarly journals Theory of mind in children with and without autism spectrum disorder: Associations with the sibling constellation

Autism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole L Matthews ◽  
Wendy A Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Multiplex Families ◽  
Sibling Constellation ◽  
Older Siblings

The two prior studies that have examined associations between the sibling constellation and theory of mind in autism spectrum disorder yielded discrepant findings. Thus, efforts to better understand the sibling–theory of mind link in autism spectrum disorder are necessary. This study examined a sample of prekindergarten- and kindergarten-aged (i.e. 4–6 years) typically developing children ( n = 39) and verbal children with autism spectrum disorder ( n = 61). Sibling presence, number of siblings, and having younger and older siblings were positively associated with theory of mind in typically developing children, but not in the full sample of children with autism spectrum disorder. However, in the subgroup of children with autism spectrum disorder without sibling recurrence, the presence of at least one older sibling was positively associated with theory of mind. Findings expand previous limited research on the sibling–theory of mind link in children with autism spectrum disorder by demonstrating a potential difference in the influence of the sibling constellation between children from simplex and multiplex families.

scholarly journals Autism Detection in Children by Combined Use of Gaze Preference and the M-CHAT-R in a Resource-Scarce Setting

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 994-1006
Author(s):  
Kelly Jensen ◽  
◽  
Sassan Noazin ◽  
Leandra Bitterfeld ◽  
Andrea Carcelen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Early Screening ◽  
Resource Limited Settings ◽  
Children With Asd ◽  
Resource Limited ◽  
Combined Use ◽  
Better Than

AbstractMost children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), in resource-limited settings (RLS), are diagnosed after the age of four. Our work confirmed and extended results of Pierce that eye tracking could discriminate between typically developing (TD) children and those with ASD. We demonstrated the initial 15 s was at least as discriminating as the entire video. We evaluated the GP-MCHAT-R, which combines the first 15 s of manually-coded gaze preference (GP) video with M-CHAT-R results on 73 TD children and 28 children with ASD, 36–99 months of age. The GP-MCHAT-R (AUC = 0.89 (95%CI: 0.82–0.95)), performed significantly better than the MCHAT-R (AUC = 0.78 (95%CI: 0.71–0.85)) and gaze preference (AUC = 0.76 (95%CI: 0.64–0.88)) alone. This tool may enable early screening for ASD in RLS.

Factorial validity of the Theory of Mind Inventory‐2 in children with autism spectrum disorder

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shih‐Chieh Lee ◽  
Ching‐Hong Tsai ◽  
Yu‐Ching Lin ◽  
Hsing‐Jung Li ◽  
Dai‐Rong Jiang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Factorial Validity
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document