Acknowledging individual strengths, interests and needs of pupils with autistic spectrum conditions: questioning ‘theory of mind’ (a pilot study)
Further reading
Abstract
Research investigating children and young people’s (CYP’s) performance in standard
False Belief (FB) tasks, such as ‘The Sally Anne Task’ has highlighted that CYP with
autistic spectrum condition (ASC) have difficulties in passing the task and
demonstrating Theory of Mind (ToM), in comparison to CYP with ‘neurotypical’
development. This finding has led to the suggestion that individuals with ASC may
have deficits in their ToM (Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 1985). The present research
aimed to explore whether there were differences in the performance of pupils with
ASC on ‘The Sally-Anne Task’ compared to an adapted task, which was tailored to the
individual’s strengths, interests and areas of need (via information from a template
about the pupil supplied by helpers).
Nineteen pupils with a diagnosis of ‘autistic spectrum disorder’ between the
ages of 6 and 10 years (mean = 8.47 years, standard deviation = 1.12 years) were
recruited from mainstream classrooms or specialist resource bases attached to
mainstream classrooms in three Welsh and five English primary schools. A pragmatic
research framework employed a within subjects design; each pupil took part in the two
(counterbalanced) tasks. A McNemar’s Exact test revealed a significant difference
between the pass rates of pupils in the standard and adapted tasks (p = .008). Pupils in
the adapted tasks were almost twice as likely to pass the tasks (M = .89, SD = .31) as
those in the standard tasks (M = .47, SD = .51). Implications for understanding ToM in
pupils with ASC are discussed and suggestions for developing support, which focuses
on the individual’s strengths and interests, are proposed.
