تأثیر آموزش مبتنی بر نظریه ذهن بر عملکرد ذهن‎خوانی و کارکردهای اجرایی در کودکان مبتلا به اختلال‎های طیف اوتیسم

Objectives: The present study has been performed for investigating the effect of training based on theory of mind  on mind reading function and executive functions in children with autism spectrum disorders. Method: The research design was a controlled randomized clinical trial. 24 children with ASD (22 boys and 2 girls), aged 6-12 years that were matched according to IQ and gender were assigned to experimental group and control group, randomly. The participants of the experimental group to attend in the educational program based on theory of mind for 25 weeks (100 sessions); while participants of the control group only received common daily educational programs. Mind reading and executive functions were measured before and after providing the intervention. In addition, the follow up test was performed two months after completed intervention. Results: The results of repeated measures  test demonstrated that the effect of time factor was significantly meaningful in primary, real and total mind reading. The meaningful interaction of the time factor and group membership indicated that training based on theory of mind significantly resulted in improvement of  primary, real, advanced and total score of mind reading function in the experimental group at post-test and follow up times. Also, results showed that the effect of time factor was significantly meaningful in the subscales of planning- problem solving, emotional-behavioral organizing, and total score of the executive functions scale. Significant interaction of time and group membership factors indicated that training based on theory of mind significantly decreased emotional-behavioral organizing and total scores of executive functions scale at the post-test and follow up times in comparison with pretest time. Conclusion: These results showed that the training based on theory of mind is an important factor for improvement of mind reading and executive functions in children with autism spectrum disorders. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in the following text.