Transfer of the Picture-in-the-Head Analogy to Natural Contexts to Aid False Belief Understanding in Autism

Abstract

Interventions to build false belief understanding in people with autism have successfully used a picture-in-the-head technique to illustrate that seeing directs actions. However, participants who subsequently passed some novel false belief tasks could not do so in real-life settings. The present intervention aimed to bridge this gap in understanding by using teaching methods that linked picture-in-the-head dolls to videos of actors in natural settings. The intervention comprised three levels. At level 1, participants were taught that seeing leads to knowing. At level 2, they were helped to pass false belief scenarios using picture-in-the-head dolls. At level 3, they were guided from these scenes to similar stories on video in which people acted out the false belief events. At post-test, seven out of ten subjects (mean verbal mental age 4:2 years) passed at least two out of three novel video-recorded false belief stories. However, some participants required narration in order to complete the tasks. Observation of the learning process across individuals indicated that there are subgroups of people with autism who have different areas of difficulty.