Social-cognitive abilities in children with lesser variants of autism: skill deficits or failure to apply skills?

The present study re-examined the ability of children with lesser variants of autism (classified as PDD-NOS) to infer emotions of other people and to describe others in terms of inner, psychological characteristics. It also e xplores the hypothesis that these children may have the skill to infer ment al states of other people: but fail to use these skills spontaneously. Chil dren with lesser variants of autism and normal control children matched for age, sex and intelligence were given three structured emotional role-takin g tasks and asked to give two spontaneous descriptions of peers. The result s showed that both groups did not differ with respect to their ability to i nfer other people's emotions in the structured role-taking tasks. In contra st, significant differences were found on the free person descriptions: the children with PDD-NOS used fewer inner, psychological characteristics to d escribe peers.