Research On Relationship And Intervention Between Implicit And Explicit Theory Of Mind In Children With Autism

Theory of Mind is the basis for unique forms of human social understanding and interaction,and is closely linked to social interaction and communication.With the advancement of research related to Theory of Mind,attention has been paid to the dual system theory,in which researchers suggest that an individual’s Theory of Mind may includes both implicit and explicit mind.Researches have shown that one of the main reasons for social interaction and communication impairments in autistic groups is due to deficits in Theory of Mind.However,most of the current researches on the Theory of Mind of children with autism are focused on uni-dimensional studies of the characteristics of the explicit or implicit Theory of Mind,and less researches have been conducted on the ability of children with autism to interpret the implicit and explicit Theory of Mind on different tasks,respectively,and to conduct intervention studies accordingly.In general,typically developing children have implicit mental abilities by 7-18 months of age,while they have some explicit mental abilities at around 4 years of age.So the aim of this study want to explore the differences between Kids with Autism and typical,under the explicit and implicit Theory of Mind on the unexpected location task and the unexpected content task.Secondly,the study hypothesis if our mind has dual system and they are related,the efficacy of the "thought bubble" picture prompting intervention strategy can be useful.Four children with autism attend the intervention.The overall results of the study were as follows:1.Study on the relationship between the Theory of Mind of autistic children(1)The performance of children in both groups on the implicit accidental location task and the implicit accidental content task was captured using an oculomotor,and the results revealed that children with autism performed differently on the different tasks than typical children.Firstly,there were significant differences between the two groups in the mean gaze difference scores(p = 0.02 < 0.05)and at the correct response(p < 0.001)in the correct belief condition for the accidental location,but not in the incorrect belief condition;this result may suggest that children with autism possess some implicit mental ability.Secondly,in the accidental content task,there was a significant difference in mean pupil size between the two groups of children in both the correct belief condition(p = 0.035 < 0.05)and the false belief condition(p = 0.026 < 0.05).It indicates that the possibility that children with autism have difficulty understanding others’ false beliefs in an unexpected content task.Also this module shows that there is inconsistency in the results of implicit mental interpretation across tasks,which may suggest the existence of different levels of implicit Theory of Mind.(2)A standardized false belief task was used to test the performance of the two groups of children on the externalizing accidental location task and the externalizing accidental content task,and it was found that the scores on the externalizing task were significantly different between the two groups of children on both the accidental location task(p=0.004 < 0.01)and the accidental content task(p=0.001 < 0.01),which is consistent with the results of previous studies.(3)There was a significant positive correlation between the scores on the implicit unexpected location task and the scores on the explicit unexpected location task for children with autism(r=0.560),and the results and findings of this study provide a theoretical and practical basis for the next step of intervention training.2.Intervention study under the Theory of Mind test guideBased on the relationship and characteristics of autistic children’s Theory of Mind,four children with different mental interpreting ability were selected,and a before-and-after group control experimental design was used to try to rehabilitate the four autistic children’s external mental interpreting ability by using the "thought bubble" picture prompted by the external teaching intervention strategy.The results showed that after the intervention,the children’s scores on the extrapersonal accidental location task improved,and the scores on the gaze discrepancy and correct response time on the implicit accidental location task also improved,verifying the effectiveness of the picture prompting strategy on both the extrapersonal and implicit mental interpretation skills of the children with autism.In conclusion,this study investigated the relationship and characteristics of implicit and explicit Theory of Mind of children with autism from different tasks in a multidimensional manner,and conducted intervention based on the findings and conclusions of the study,which provided clinical experiences for the education and teaching of mental interpretation skills of children with autism.