Autistic Children And Theory Of Mind And Central Coherence Relations

Autism was a kind of pervasive developmental disorders and its diagnosis is currently based on a critical triad of impairments in socialization, communication and imagination, with stereotyped repetitive interests. The co-occurrence of both social and non-social impairments was an important character of autism. The theory-of-mind deficits were well placed to explain the triad of impairments, namely the social impairments. On the other hand, weak central coherence appeared to account for the non-social impairments. The modularity theory of theory of mind argued theory of mind was a modular ability, that was, an ability that was domain-special. Consequently, if the theory-of-mind deficits were explained by weak central coherence theory, it would be a challenge to the modularity theory. The relationship between them represented the links between social and non-social abnormalities, as well as the conflict between domain-general and domain-special development opinions. Therefore, the importance had been gradually attached to the possible links between theory of mind and central coherence in autism.In the research, autistic children's theory of mind were measured by 5 belief tasks, that is, inferred belief, not-own belief, explicit false belief, other's false belief, and own false belief. On the other hand, the Block Design subtest of Wechsler Intelligence Scales and the Embedded Figures Test were used as the indices of central coherence. 12 autistic children and 28 normally developing children aged 4.5 participated in all the experimental tasks. Then, on the basis of balancing their verbal IQ, we compared autistic group's performance of theory of mind and central coherence tasks with those of normal group. In the meanwhile, the correlation between theory of mind and central coherence was analyzed in the two groups when verbal IQ and chronological age were controlled for by partial correlation. The results indicated that:a) The development of theory-of-mind ability in autistic children from our country was significantly slower than normally developing children who have the same verbal IQ, but the two groups' developmental sequences of theory-of-mind ability were basically consistent.b) Autistic children's performance on theory of mind tasks was significantly related to both their verbal IQ and chronological age, but when age was controlled for by partial correlation, the association between theory of mind and verbal IQ didn't remain significant. This showed verbal IQ was necessaryfor understanding theory-of-mind tasks, but not sufficient for passing tasks.c) Central coherence in autistic group was significantly weaker than normal group, which verified the weak central coherence theory to some extent.d) Performance on theory of mind tasks was independent on central coherence, which indicated that they were distinct cognitive process and independent each other. This supported that the theory-of-mind development was domain-special.