Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Can Attribute False Beliefs in a Spontaneous-Response Preferential-Looking Task

An established body of literature indicates that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty understanding figurative language due to a deficit in theory mind, or the ability consider beliefs other people. Children ASD tend similarly fail traditional mind tasks, which assess their represent false beliefs. Our claim is, however, these tasks involve cognitive processing demands might mask belief because they require elicited responses. We examined whether demonstrate false-belief when tested spontaneous-response task measures children’s eye gaze durations. The two child participant groups were composed 20 males (aged 3–9 years) and typically developing 2–5 who individually matched according verbal mental age. listened change-of-location story accompanied by book matching non-matching pictures. final page showed character searching for her object location was either consistent inconsistent belief. Both looked reliably longer at belief-consistent picture, regardless character’s true false, though slower do so. suggest assessment technique can potentially reveal comprehension future research.