Fariba Azabdaftari, Fereshteh Azabdaftari.
Social impairment in childhood autism and theory of mind.
Rawal Med J Jan ;33(1):78-80.

Objective: To investigate whether `theory of mind` is impaired in autistic children. Materials and Methods: This is a cross sectional double blind study performed during years 2006 and 2007 in Nemmove day care center in Tehran, Iran. Thirty-one children in three groups participated in the study; an autistic group consisted of 10, a control group consisted of 7 Down`s Syndrome and 14 normal children. The autistic children were from different day care centers and units specialized in autism. The autistic children were diagnosed by DSM-IV clinical criteria. Answering the “Belief Question” correctly meant that the children were able to predict the others` behavior on the basis of their belief. Although the Mental age (MA) of autistic children was higher than that of control group children, they failed to answer the `False Belief` question. Two control questions (Reality Question) and (Memory Question) were also asked. Results: The results for Down`s Syndrome and normal subjects were almost similar. Twelve out of 14 normal children and 6 out of 7 Down`s Syndrome children passed the Belief Question (85% and 86% approximately). Eight of 10 autistic children (80%) failed the Belief Question . The difference between the groups was highly significant (p=0.006). Conclusion: The failure shown by autistic children constitutes a specific deficit, namely impaired Theory of Mind and cannot be attributed to the general effects of mental retardation, since Down`s syndrome children performed well on our task. (Rawal Med J 2008;33:78-80).

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