Baron-Cohen S, Jolliffe T, Mortimore C, Robertson M
Dept. of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, U.K.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 1997 Oct;38(7):813-22. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.1997.tb01599.x.
Previous studies have found a subgroup of people with autism or Asperger Syndrome who pass second-order tests of theory of mind. However, such tests have a ceiling in developmental terms corresponding to a mental age of about 6 years. It is therefore impossible to say if such individuals are intact or impaired in their theory of mind skills. We report the performance of very high functioning adults with autism or Asperger Syndrome on an adult test of theory of mind ability. The task involved inferring the mental state of a person just from the information in photographs of a person's eyes. Relative to age-matched normal controls and a clinical control group (adults with Tourette Syndrome), the group with autism and Asperger Syndrome were significantly impaired on this task. The autism and Asperger Syndrome sample was also impaired on Happé's strange stories tasks. In contrast, they were unimpaired on two control tasks: recognising gender from the eye region of the face, and recognising basic emotions from the whole face. This provides evidence for subtle mindreading deficits in very high functioning individuals on the autistic continuum.
先前的研究发现，有一部分自闭症或阿斯伯格综合征患者能够通过二阶心理理论测试。然而，从发展角度来看，此类测试存在上限，大约相当于6岁儿童的心理年龄。因此，无法确定这些个体的心理理论技能是完好无损还是存在缺陷。我们报告了高功能自闭症或阿斯伯格综合征成年患者在一项成人心理理论能力测试中的表现。该任务要求仅根据人物眼睛照片中的信息推断其心理状态。与年龄匹配的正常对照组和临床对照组（患有妥瑞氏症的成年人）相比，自闭症和阿斯伯格综合征组在这项任务上表现出明显缺陷。自闭症和阿斯伯格综合征样本在哈佩的离奇故事任务中也表现不佳。相比之下，他们在两项对照任务中表现正常：从面部眼部区域识别性别，以及从整个面部识别基本情绪。这为自闭症谱系中高功能个体存在细微的心理解读缺陷提供了证据。
