Theory of Mind: A Comparison of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Typically Developing Children

This study examined the theory of mind (ToM) performance and the relationship between language, chronological age and theory of mind in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and in typically developing (TD) children by utilizing the ex-post-facto design. The participants were 30 children with ASD and 30 TD children whose Test of Early Language Development (TELD) - Turkish Version expressive language age scores were at least 4 years old. Children with ASD and TD children were matched on mean length of utterance (MLU). ToM ability was assessed on a battery of tasks that have developmental sequence. The findings revealed that the children with ASD and TD children who were matched according to MLU, performed similarly on ToM tasks. Besides language was related to the performance on ToM tasks in children with ASD and in TD children whereas also chronological age is related to the performance on ToM tasks in TD children.