AN EXPLORATION OF PERSON PERCEPTION ABILITIES IN CHILDREN WITH A PERVASIVE DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDER NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED

This explorative study investigates differences in person perception a bilities between a group of children diagnosed as having a Pervasive D evelopmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDDNOS) and a group of normal children of the same age and sex. Person perception, a social-c ognitive skill, concerns the way in which children conceptualise other people, their intentions, attitudes, traits and emotions (central), a s well as their overt behaviour and their physical characteristics (pe ripheral). Person perception was investigated by means of a free-perso n description, in which the child was asked to describe another person . Children with a PDDNOS used more peripheral and less central stateme nts than the control group to describe another person. However, these differences seemed to reflect differences in intelligence between the two groups, rather than differences in a specific social-cognitive ski ll. The results need to be replicated, but seem to be in line with oth er studies that suggest that there may be subgroups of the autistic sp ectrum that show severe social impairment but have good social-cogniti ve abilities.