False Belief Task
A very important ability that a person acquires as he develops is the ability to understand that others may have beliefs that are wrong. This indicates the development of a Theory of Mind. Several studies which have compared performance between typically developing children, children with mental retardation, and autism groups have results which suggest that those with autism have difficulty passing false belief tasks.1Most typically developing groups are able to pass by the age of 4.
In false belief tasks, participants are usually told a story, and then asked about the beliefs of a character in the story that may not have the knowledge that the child has.
Criticisms
Although many studies support the idea that ASD groups lack a theory of mind, studies using false belief tasks in Asian populations found that even typically developing children performed poorly. The authors attributed this to an effect of Asian cultures which emphasize attributing behavior to external or contextual causes. More can be read in Theory of Mind2
Citations
1. Perner J. The curious incident of the photo that was accused of being false: issues of domain specificity in development, autism, and brain imaging.Q J Exp Psychol (Colchester). 2008 Jan;61(1):76-89. PMID 18038340
2.Kobayashi C et. al. Cultural and linguistic inXuence on neural bases of ‘Theory of Mind’: An fMRI study with Japanese bilinguals. Brain Lang. 2006 Aug;98(2):210-20. PMID 16753205
