How Children with Autism and Asperger Syndrome Respond to Questions: a ‘Naturalistic’ Theory of Mind Task

Abstract

In light of a well-documented deficit in theory of mind found in high-functioning individuals with autism (HFA) and Asperger Syndrome (AS), this article explores HFA and AS children’s social-cognitive understanding of other people as reflected in their linguistic performance when answering mundane, everyday questions posed by their family members during dinnertime interaction. Ethnographic observations and video recordings of spontaneous interaction at home reveal that, contrary to findings in cognitive psychological research, the majority of the time the children were able to detect their interlocutors’ communicative intentions and produce relevant responses that were marked by their conversational partners as acceptable. This article proposes that this success is due in part to parents who, through different strategies, facilitate their HFA and AS children’s access to socio-cultural perspective-taking and their interlocutors’ intentions, and better their children’s communicative skills.