Naïve theories in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

A deficit in understanding theory of mind has been central to the study of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) for decades (Baron-Cohen, 1989). Theory of mind (ToM), also known as naïve psychology, is defined as understanding others’ mental states (Wellman, 2014). This ability develops around the age of 4 but seems to remain deficient in people with ASD (Frith, 2012). Research has revealed explicit (i.e., conscious knowledge of others’ mental states) as well as implicit (i.e., subconscious knowledge of others’ mental states) forms of ToM (Baron-Cohen, 1989; Schuwerk, 2015). Though much research has been conducted on explicit ToM in ASD, few studies have focused on implicit ToM skills, and none, to our knowledge, have compared the latter to other types of naïve understanding in a within-subjects design. Indeed, other forms of naïve knowledge such as naïve physics and biology flourish by the age of 4 (Wellman and Gelman, 1992). Naïve physics refers to understanding the mechanical functions and physical properties of artefacts (Baron-Cohen et al., 1986) and naïve biology refers to understanding concepts such as growth and illness in living creatures (Gottfried and Gelman, 2005). Children with ASD have been found to have no deficit in naïve physics (e.g., Baron-Cohen et al., 1986; Binnie and Williams, 2002) but little work has focused on naïve biology in ASD. These results have been mixed; Gopnik and colleagues (2000) suggest an impairment in classification of living versus non-living things whereas Binnie and Williams’ (2002) results suggest that understanding growth, illness and internal motive may be intact in children with ASD. To help clarify these results as well as contribute to the understanding of naïve knowledge in ASD, the current study compared children with ASD to neurotypical children on tasks of naïve psychology, physics, and biology. Naïve psychology was tested with an anticipatory looking task which consisted in watching a short video (Theormer et al., 2012) where a protagonist fails to witness his car leave one of two garages and leave the screen. If the children possessed implicit ToM skills, they would anticipate that the protagonist would look at the last place he saw his car (anticipatory looking) and look longer at this area of the screen (differential looking time). The naïve biology task consisted in matching biological or mechanical insides to unfamiliar animals and objects (Gottfried and Gelman, 2005). The naïve physics task consisted in ordering causal stories (e.g., an egg rolls off the table and breaks; Baron-Cohen et al., 1986). Results suggest that children with ASD only underperform on the naïve psychology task, meaning their deficit may lie solely in understanding unobservable psychological phenomena (i.e., mental states) rather than unobservable biological phenomena (i.e., biological insides). Performances in naïve biology and physics were equivalent across groups and uncorrelated to performance in naïve psychology as measured by both anticipatory looking and differential looking time. This suggests that the ability to mentally represent the physical and biological world is intact in ASD, therefore this deficit may be specific to the mental representation of others’ cognitive states.

Authors

• Elizabeth Dutemple, Concordia University
  Presenting Author

• Kimberly Burnside
  Non-Presenting Author

• Diane Poulin-Dubois, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author