Abstract
One explanation for the persistent social disabilities of individuals with autism is based on the nature of social stimuli, being transient, complex and very difficult to predict. It was suggested that autistic people's performance on cognitive perspective-taking tasks (a measure of understanding of other people) would be enhanced with increased predictability and reduced transience of stimulus materials. Thus autistic and control subjects were tested on Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith's (1985) “Sally/Anne” task and on two other perspective-taking tasks that involved more predictable interactions and nontransient cues. Autistic subjects differed significantly from the control subjects in their ability to perform Baron-Cohen's task but not the other tasks. As well the autistic subjects performed significantly differently on the two types of tasks. Failure of the autistic subjects on the Sally/Anne task with their concurrent success on the other tasks can best be attributed to the nontransient nature of the stimuli used and the predictability of the protagonists' reactions in the two tasks on which they succeeded.
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The author thanks the staff, parents, and children from the Associations for Autistic Children of Western Australia, Queensland, and South Australia. In addition, the staff, students, and parents of a number of day care centres, schools. Education Support Centres and special schools in Western Australia provided a great deal of patient assistance. I thank C. Peterson and D. Leach for their valuable supervision in the early stages of this project and I especially thank S. Dziurawiec for her excellent advice and generosity in the time she spent reading this paper in its final stages. Finally, I particularly thank Tom Reed for his endless support and encouragement and always excellent advice.
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Reed, T. Performance of autistic and control subjects on three cognitive perspective-taking tasks. J Autism Dev Disord 24, 53–66 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02172212
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02172212