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Performance of Children and Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome or High-functioning Autism on Advanced Theory of Mind Tasks

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Abstract

Although a number of advanced theory of mind tasks have been developed, there is a dearth of information on whether performances on different tasks are associated. The present study examined the performance of 21 children and adolescents with diagnoses of Asperger syndrome (AS) and 20 typically developing controls on three advanced theory of mind tasks: The Eyes Task, the Strange Stories, and the Stories from Everyday Life. The participants in the clinical group demonstrated lower performance than the controls on all the three tasks. The pattern of findings, however, indicates that these tasks may share different information-processing requirements in addition to tapping different mentalizing abilities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Social Sciences, Lillehammer University College, Postboks 952, 2604, Lillehammer, Norway

    Nils Kaland

  2. Department of Psychology and Special Education, The Danish University of Education, Copenhagen NV, Denmark

    Kirsten Callesen & Annette Møller-Nielsen

  3. Department of Health Psychology, Institute of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen NV, Denmark

    Erik Lykke Mortensen

  4. National Network for the Study of Infant Mental Health Oslo, and Institute of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Lars Smith

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  1. Nils Kaland
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  2. Kirsten Callesen
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  3. Annette Møller-Nielsen
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  4. Erik Lykke Mortensen
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  5. Lars Smith
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Correspondence to Nils Kaland.

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Kaland, N., Callesen, K., Møller-Nielsen, A. et al. Performance of Children and Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome or High-functioning Autism on Advanced Theory of Mind Tasks. J Autism Dev Disord 38, 1112–1123 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0496-8

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