Iao Lai-Sang, Leekam Susan R
Wales Autism Research Centre, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK.
Wales Autism Research Centre, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2014 Jun;122:1-20. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2013.11.017. Epub 2014 Feb 7.
Understanding of false belief has long been considered to be a crucial aspect of "theory of mind" that can be explained by a domain-specific mechanism. We argue against this claim using new evidence from a nonverbal false representation task (false-sign task) with typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Experiments 1 and 2 showed that typically developing children (mean age=62.67months) were equivalent in their performance across nonverbal and verbal forms of both the false-belief and false-sign tasks. Results for these two misrepresentation tasks differed from the results of an outdated representation task ("false"-photograph task). Experiment 3 showed that children with ASD had difficulties with the false representation tasks, and this could not be explained by executive functioning or language impairments. These findings support the view that children with ASD might not have a specific theory-of-mind deficit.
长期以来，对错误信念的理解一直被认为是“心理理论”的一个关键方面，可用一种特定领域的机制来解释。我们利用来自一项针对发育正常儿童和自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童的非言语错误表征任务（错误信号任务）的新证据，反驳这一观点。实验1和实验2表明，发育正常的儿童（平均年龄=62.67个月）在错误信念任务和错误信号任务的非言语及言语形式中的表现相当。这两项错误表征任务的结果与一项过时的表征任务（“错误”照片任务）的结果不同。实验3表明，患有ASD的儿童在错误表征任务中存在困难，而这不能用执行功能或语言障碍来解释。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即患有ASD的儿童可能不存在特定的心理理论缺陷。
