Development Features Of Desire Understanding Of Children With Autism

Objective:The study aimed to apply classical desire understanding tasks to autistic group and normal children in China, so as to get a systematic and clear view of different levels of desire understanding development in Chinese autistic children.Methods:In this study, there are totally113children involved aging between35months and86months, among whom there arer54children with autism and59normal children of equivalent chronological age. Verbal comprehension ability was balanced using picture vocabulary test from Chinese Wechsler Young Children Scale of Intelligence(C-WYCSI). Besides, simple desire understanding task, desire formation understand-ding task and conflict desire understanding task were applied to measure the desire understanding ability of subjects systematically.Results:1. Taking picture vocabulary scores as covariates, analysis of covariance yielded significant main effects of tasks, F=14.253, p <0.001. Post-hoc Bonferroni comparisons (p<0.05) showed that for all partici-pants, the score of simple desire understanding task was significantly higher than that of desire formation understanding task(p=0.006), as well as that of conflict desire understanding task(p<0.001), that the score of desire formation understanding task was significantly higher than that of conflict desire understanding task(p<0.001). At the same time, the result also showed apparent main effects of groups, F=23.261,p<0.001. While interaction between tasks and groups were not significant, F=1.394,p=0.250.2. For autism group,3(age group)×3(condition) repeated measurement analysis of variance showed significant main effects of age, F=5.286, p=0.008. Post-hoc LSD comparisons (p<0.05) showed that scores of age group2and age group3were evidently higher than that of age group1(p=0.003; p=0.020), no statistical significance was found between the score of age group2and age group3(p=0.464). The main effects of conditions were apparent, F=10.425,p<0.001. There was no significant interaction between age groups and conditions, F=0.474, p=0.755.3. With the score of desire formation understanding task being dependent variable and autistic children divided into3age groups, One-way ANOVA yielded no evident effects of age, F=1.704,p=0.193. Binomial distribution test found no significant difference between pass rate of autistic children and that expected by chance (p=0.078).4. Pass rate of autistic children on desire formation understanding task was significantly lower than that of normal children,X2=5.878, p=0.015.5. With the score of conflict desire understanding task being dependent variable and autistic children divided into3age groups, One-way ANOVA yielded no significant effects of age, F=1.001, p=0.375. Binomial distribution test found that pass rate of autistic children under both conditions was significantly lower than that expected by chance (p<0.001, p<0.001).6. Pass rate of autistic children on conflict desire understanding task was significantly lower than that of normal children under both conditions (p<0.001,p<0.001)Conclusions:1. Relative to normal subjects of equivalent chronological age, children with autism performed less appropriately on all those desire understanding tasks.2. Desire understanding of autistic children develops at similar paces with normal children in China.3. The ability of simple desire understanding of children with autism experienced rapid development between35months and68months.4. Most autistic children aging between35months and86months had no idea how desire formed.5. The vast majority of children with autism had difficulty in conflict desire understanding task, no matter there was preference or not.