Perner J, Frith U, Leslie A M, Leekam S R
Experimental Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, England.
Child Dev. 1989 Jun;60(3):688-700.
26 autistic children with mental ages of 3-13 years were tested on 3 tasks that are within the capability of 3- or 4-year-old normal children. The first task tested understanding of a mistaken belief. Children were shown a typical box of a certain brand of sweets, and they all thought that it contained that kind of sweet. To their surprise, however, the box contained something else. Yet, only 4 out of the 26 autistic children were able to anticipate that another child in the same situation would make the same mistake. In contrast, all but 1 of 12 children with specific language impairment, matched for mental age, understood that others would be as misled as they had been themselves. The autistic children were also tested for their ability to infer knowledge about the content of a container from having or not having looked inside. All 4 children who had passed the belief task and an additional 4 performed perfectly, but most failed. The third task assessed children's pragmatic ability to adjust their answers to provide new rather than repeat old information. Here, too, most autistic children seemed unable to reliably make the correct adjustment. These results confirm the hypothesis that autistic children have profound difficulty in taking account of mental states.
对26名心理年龄在3至13岁的自闭症儿童进行了三项任务测试，这些任务3、4岁正常儿童也能够完成。第一项任务测试对错误信念的理解。向孩子们展示了一盒某品牌的典型糖果，他们都认为里面装的是那种糖果。然而，令他们惊讶的是，盒子里装的是其他东西。然而，26名自闭症儿童中只有4人能够预料到处于相同情境的另一个孩子会犯同样的错误。相比之下，在12名心理年龄匹配的特定语言障碍儿童中，除1人外，其他人都明白其他人会和他们自己一样被误导。还测试了自闭症儿童从是否看过容器内部来推断容器内容物相关知识的能力。所有通过信念任务的4名儿童以及另外4名儿童表现完美，但大多数儿童未能通过。第三项任务评估了儿童根据情况调整答案以提供新信息而非重复旧信息的语用能力。在这方面，大多数自闭症儿童似乎也无法可靠地做出正确调整。这些结果证实了自闭症儿童在考虑心理状态方面存在严重困难这一假设。
