Autism Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Autism, including details on symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, causes, effects.

Social communication in children with autism: the relationship between theory of mind and discourse development.

Hale CM, Tager-Flusberg H

Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA.

This longitudinal study investigated the developmental trajectory of discourse skills and theory of mind in 57 children with autism. Children were tested at two time points spaced 1 year apart. Each year they provided a natural language sample while interacting with one parent, and were given standardized vocabulary measures and a developmentally sequenced battery of theory of mind tasks. The language samples were coded for conversational skills, specifically the child's use of topic-related contingent utterances. Children with autism made significant gains over 1 year in the ability to maintain a topic of discourse. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that theory of mind skills contributed unique variance to individual differences in contingent discourse ability and vice versa, when measured concurrently; however, they did not predict longitudinal changes. The findings offer some empirical support for the hypothesis that theory of mind is linked to communicative competence in children with autism.

Published 28 April 2005 in Autism, 9(2): 157-78.
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