An investigation into the early development of executive functions and theory of mind in autism and in typical development

This study compared the performance of young children with autism (n = 38) and typically developing children (n = 52) on eight tasks of executive functioning and five tasks of theory of mind. In the first set of analyses, 38 children with autism aged three years to eight years, 11 months were matched one-to-one with typically developing children on receptive language skills. The autistic children performed as well as their language-matched peers on tasks that assessed working memory, non rule-bound learning, and precursor theory of mind skills. They performed less well on tasks assessing inhibitory control, generativity, strategic deception and first-order theory of mind skills.; In the second analysis, 38 children with autism and 41 typically developing children were divided into three age groups (i.e., 3- and 4-year olds, 5- and 6-year olds, 7- and 8-year olds). The groups were matched on chronological age and verbal ability was used as a covariate. For both groups, performance on the majority of tasks improved with age. While few statistically significant age by group interactions were found, these findings, and those related to a descriptive analysis of the ages at which children in each group mastered particular executive function and theory of mind skills, suggested that young autistic children acquire executive function and theory of mind skills at a slower rate than typically developing children. Interestingly, a substantial number of children with autism mastered most of the skills assessed and the majority had some level of success.; Finally, the results of the analysis exploring the relationship between executive functions and theory of mind skills in the group of children with autism and their language-matched controls suggest that there is no clear relationship between these two sets of constructs. Only two executive function tasks, i.e., Luria's Tapping Task, which measures inhibitory control, and the Generativity of Play Task, were highly predictive of performance on the Standard Location False Belief Task. The study also provided evidence that performance on some executive function and theory of mind skills is related to individual differences in verbal ability. Implications for theory, research and clinical practice are discussed.