Happé F G
Medical Research Council Cognitive Development Unit, London, England.
J Autism Dev Disord. 1994 Apr;24(2):129-54. doi: 10.1007/BF02172093.
Research has suggested that the core handicaps of autism result from a specific impairment in theory of mind (ToM). However, this account has been challenged by the finding that a minority of autistic subjects pass 1st- and even 2nd-order ToM tests while remaining socially handicapped. In the present study, able autistic subjects who failed ToM tasks, those who passed 1st-order, and those who passed 2nd-order tasks were tested with a battery of more naturalistic and complex stories. Autistic subjects were impaired at providing context-appropriate mental state explanations for the story characters' nonliteral utterances, compared to normal and mentally handicapped controls. Performance on the stories was closely related to performance on standard ToM tasks, but even those autistic subjects who passed all ToM tests showed impairments on the more naturalistic story materials relative to normal adult controls.
研究表明，自闭症的核心障碍源于心理理论（ToM）的特定损伤。然而，这一观点受到了一项发现的挑战，即少数自闭症患者通过了一阶甚至二阶ToM测试，但仍存在社交障碍。在本研究中，对未能通过ToM任务的高功能自闭症患者、通过一阶任务的患者以及通过二阶任务的患者进行了一系列更自然、更复杂故事的测试。与正常和智力障碍对照组相比，自闭症患者在为故事角色的非字面言语提供符合情境的心理状态解释方面存在障碍。故事测试的表现与标准ToM任务的表现密切相关，但即使是那些通过了所有ToM测试的自闭症患者，相对于正常成年对照组，在更自然的故事材料上也表现出障碍。
