Department of Psychology, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke St. West, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2021 Oct;51(10):3600-3609. doi: 10.1007/s10803-020-04813-9. Epub 2021 Jan 1.
Theory of mind is defined as the understanding that mental states predict and explain people's behaviors. It develops around the age of 4 but seems to remain deficient in people with ASD, whereas other forms of naïve understanding remain intact. This study compares children with ASD to neurotypical children on tasks measuring naïve psychology, physics, and biology (biological parts). Results suggest that children with ASD only underperform on an implicit false belief task. Performances in naïve biology and physics were equivalent across the two groups and uncorrelated to performance on the false belief task. This confirms that naïve physics and biological reasoning are intact in children with ASD but that tracking false beliefs is challenging for this population.
心理理论被定义为理解心理状态可以预测和解释人们的行为。它大约在 4 岁时发展，但在自闭症患者中似乎仍然存在缺陷，而其他形式的朴素理解仍然完好无损。本研究比较了自闭症儿童和神经典型儿童在测量朴素心理学、物理学和生物学（生物部分）任务上的表现。结果表明，自闭症儿童仅在隐性错误信念任务上表现不佳。两组儿童在朴素生物学和物理学方面的表现相当，与错误信念任务的表现无关。这证实了自闭症儿童的朴素物理和生物推理是完整的，但对这一人群来说，跟踪错误信念是具有挑战性的。
