The purpose of the study reported here was to examine the degree to which delays or deficits in developing a theory of mind are specific to children with autism or extend to other groups of atypical children with varying conversational experience and awareness. The performance of deaf children from a variety of conversational backgrounds was compared with that of autistic and normal hearing children on a range of tasks requiring representation of others' mental states. Native signers, oral deaf children, and normal hearing children scored similarly, and their performance exceeded that shown by signing deaf children from hearing families and children with autism. The latter two groups did not differ significantly from each other. These results point to an interplay among biology, conversation, and culture in the development of a theory of mind.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
2.
Baron-CohenS. (1992). The theory of mind hypothesis of autism: History and prospects of the idea. The Psychologist, 5, 9–12.
3.
Baron-CohenS.LeslieA.M.FrithU. (1985). Does the autistic child have theory of mind?Cognition, 21, 37–46.
4.
BrownJ.R.Donelan-McCallN.DunnJ. (1996). Why talk about mental states? The significance of children's conversations with friends, siblings and mothers. Child Development, 67, 836–849.
5.
BrunerJ.FeldmanC. (1993). Theories of mind and the problem of autism. In Baron-CohenS.Tager-FlusbergH.CohenD., (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from children with autism (pp. 267–291). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
6.
DeleauM. (1996). L'attribution d'etats mentaux chez les enfants sourds et entendants: Une approche du rle de l'experience langagière sur une Théorie de l'Esprit. Bulletin de Psychologie, 3, 1–20.
7.
DunnJ. (1994). Changing minds and changing relationships. In LewisC.MitchellP., (Eds.), Origins of an understanding of mind (pp. 297–310). Hove, England: Erlbaum.
8.
DunnL.M.DunnL.M. (1981). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.
9.
FletcherP.C.HappéF.FrithU.BakerS.C.DolanR.J.FrackowiakR.S.J.FrithC.D. (1995). Other minds in the brain: A functional imaging study of ‘theory of mind’ in story comprehension. Cognition, 57, 109–128.
10.
FodorJ. (1987). Psychosemantics: The problem of meaning in philosophy of mind. Cambridge, MA: Bradford.
11.
FrithU.MortonJ.LeslieA.M. (1991). The cognitive basis of a biological disorder: Autism. Trends in Neurosciences, 10, 433–438.
12.
GuéhéneucK.DeleauM. (1997, September). Deaf children also have a theory of mind… but somewhat later. Paper presented at the VIIIth European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Rennes, France.
13.
HarrisD.B. (1963). Children's drawings as measures of intellectual maturity. New York: Harcourt Brace.
14.
HarrisP.L. (1989). Children and emotion. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
15.
LeekamS.R.PernerJ. (1991). Do autistic children have a metarepresentational deficit?Cognition, 40, 203–218.
16.
LewisC.FreemanN.H.KyriakidouC.Maridaki-KassotakiK.BerridgeD.M. (1996). Social influences on false belief access: Specific sibling influences or general apprenticeship. Child Development, 67, 2930–2947.
17.
LillardA.S. (1997). Other folks' theories of mind and behavior. Psychological Science, 8, 268–274.
18.
MarscharkM. (1993). Psychological development of deaf children. New York: Oxford University Press.
19.
MeadowK.P. (1975). The development of deaf children. In HetheringtonE.M., (Ed.), Review of child development research (Vol. 5, pp. 441–508). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
20.
MeadowK.P.GreenbergM.T.ErtingC.CarmichaelH. (1981). Interactions of deaf mothers and deaf preschool children: Comparisons with three other groups of deaf and hearing dyads. American Annals of the Deaf, 126, 454–468.
21.
MorfordJ.P.Goldin-MeadowS. (1997). From here and now to there and then: The development of displaced reference in homesign and English. Child Development, 68, 420–435.
22.
NevilleH.J.CoffreyS.A.LawsonD.S.FischerA.EmoreyK.BellugiU. (1997). Neural systems mediating American Sign Language: Effects of sensory experience and age of acquisition. Brain and Language, 57, 285–308.
23.
PernerJ.FrithU.LeslieA.M.LeekamS.R. (1989). Exploration of the autistic child's theory of mind: Knowledge, belief, and communication. Child Development, 60, 689–700.
24.
PetersonC.C.SiegalM. (1995). Deafness, conversation and the theory of mind. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 36, 459–474.
25.
PetersonC.C.SiegalM. (1997). Psychological, biological, and physical thinking in normal, autistic, and deaf children. In WellmanH.M.InagakiK., (Eds.), The emergence of core domains of thought (pp. 55–70). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
26.
PetersonC.C.SiegalM. (1998). Changing focus on the representational mind: Deaf, autistic and normal children's concepts of false photos, false drawings and false beliefs. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 16, 301–320.
27.
PowerD.CartyB. (1990). Cross-cultural communication and the deaf community in Australia. In HendrickC.HoltonR., (Eds.), Cross-cultural communication and professional education (pp. 233–236). Adelaide, Australia: Flinders University Centre for Multicultural Studies.
28.
PremackD. (1992). On the origins of domain-specific primitives. In PickH.L.Den BroekP.V.KnillD.C., (Eds.), Cognition: Conceptual and methodological issues (pp. 188–200). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
29.
SiegalM. (1997). Knowing children: Experiments in conversation and cognition. Hove, England: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis.
30.
SiegalM.BeattieK. (1991). Where to look first for children's understanding of false beliefs. Cognition, 38, 1–12.
31.
SiegalM.PetersonC.C. (1994). Children's theory of mind and the conversational territory of cognitive development. In LewisC.MitchellP., (Eds.), Origins of an understanding of mind (pp. 427–455). Hove, England: Erlbaum.
32.
SiegalM.PetersonC.C. (1996). Breaking the mold: A fresh look at questions about children's understanding of lies and mistakes. Developmental Psychology, 32, 322–334.
33.
Tager-FlusbergH. (1993). What language reveals about the understanding of minds in children with autism. In Baron-CohenS.Tager-FlusbergH.CohenD., (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from children with autism (pp. 138–157). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
34.
WellmanH.M. (1990). The child's theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
