THE ROLE OF AGE AND VERBAL-ABILITY IN THE THEORY OF MIND TASK-PERFORMANCE OF SUBJECTS WITH AUTISM

A number of studies have reported that most children with autism fail theory of mind tasks. It is unclear why certain children with autism p ass such tests and what might be different about these subjects. In th e present study, the role of age and verbal ability in theory of mind task performance was explored. Data were pooled from 70 autistic, 34 m entally handicapped, and 70 normal young subjects, previously tested f or a number of different studies. The analysis suggested that children with autism required far higher verbal mental age to pass false belie f tasks than did other subjects. While normally developing children ha d a 50% probability of passing both tasks at the verbal mental age of 4 years, autistic subjects took more than twice as long to reach this probability of success (at the advanced verbal mental age of 9-2). Pos sible causal relations between verbal ability and the ability to repre sent mental states are discussed.