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Two studies are reported that compare the descriptions given by children with and without autism of animated stimuli depicting mechanical launching effects, intentional reactions or sequences of mechanical and intentional reactions. Children were matched on chronological age, verbal mental age and IQ. The children with autism were as able as the control groups at differentiating mechanical launches from intentional reactions. Moreover, their descriptions of the longer action sequence were significantly different neither in length nor in their use of mental state language from those of the controls. However, finer-grained analyses of the accounts showed that the children with autism involved themselves more in the narrative than did control children. They also made less reference to episodes showing actions between animate objects, especially when the objects were not in contact. The implications of these findings for theories of autistic social dysfunction are discussed.

Training on complements in English, German, and Mandarin has been reported to trigger improvements on both complements and Theory of Mind (ToM), with typically developing (TD) pre-schoolers on the verge of developing these skills (Hale and Tager-Flusberg, 2003; Lohmann and Tomasello, 2003; Shuliang et al., 2014). In the current study, we build on the idea that increasing mastery of complementation holds the promise of enhancing ToM, and seek (i) to replicate the positive effects observed in previous work for this effect in French-speaking TD children, and (ii) to pilot extending this to clinical children, more specifically those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), through exploring whether improvement in the latter, clinical groups follows that of the TD group. Sixty children with ToM difficulties, 16 with ASD (aged 5;6–11;8), 20 with DLD (aged 4;8–9;0) and 24 typically developing children aged (2;9–5;3 years), participated in a 4-week training program. Half received training targeting sentential complements and half received a control training targeting lexical skills. Complementation training, but not lexical training, led to a significant direct increase in complements, and also had the indirect effect of significantly boosting belief reasoning. TD and clinical groups followed the same patterns of performance. These results confirm previous findings in other languages for TD, and further suggest promising new directions for therapeutic programs addressing ToM delays in populations of different aetiologies, namely the incorporation of a motivating training on complementation.

Background The Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire’07 (DCDQ’07) is a parent-report measure to identify children at risk for Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). We developed a French version of the DCDQ’07 (DCDQ-FE) that has shown excellent inter-language reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.91) and is culturally relevant for use in European countries. The aims of this study were to examine the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, construct validity of the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire-French European (DCDQ-FE), as well as establish a cut-off score. Methods The psychometric properties of the DCDQ-FE were examined with a clinical group of 30 children (mean age: 9.4 years, SD = 2.6) and a control group of 43 children (mean age: 9.1 years, SD = 2.4). Their parents (n = 73) filled out the DCDQ-FE at a first sitting and 70 of them filled it out 38 days later in average for test-retest reliability. The children were assessed using the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) so as to measure the convergent validity of the DCDQ-FE. The cut-off score was determined with an additional sample of 42 children according to scores on the MABC-2 (≥ 16 th percentile) (n = 115). Results and implications Internal consistency of the DCDQ-FE was excellent (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.96) and test-retest reliability was good (ICC = 0.956) with no differences between scores obtained at the two sittings (p > 0.05). Differences in scores between children in the clinical and control groups (Z = -6.58, p < 0.001) provide evidence of construct validity. The correlation obtained between DCDQ-FE and MABC-2 scores (Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient = 0.802, p < 0.001) supports convergent validity. Using a cut-off of 56, overall sensitivity and specificity were 85.0% and 81.6% respectively (area under the curve = 0.896). The DCDQ-FE is a reliable and valid questionnaire for detecting children who are at risk for DCD in a European-French population of children aged 5 to 15 years old.

After rewording items as a result of the outcomes of the cognitive interview, the European-French version of the DCDQ'07 is culturally appropriate for use in French-speaking Switzerland. Further studies are necessary to determine its psychometric properties.

In the present study, comprising four experiments, we evaluated the development of the child's ability to theorize about intentionality. Children (N = 176) and adults (N = 28) were shown short films about two small moving geometrical forms. The stimuli were replications of those created by Michotte (1946) and Kanizsa & Vicario (1969). The participants' descriptions and explanations were examined. The causes of movement were divided into two categories: causality and intentionality. Our prediction was that the distinction between these two categories would be mastered at an early age, but only at a much later age would participants theorize about them. Results show three stages to this development.

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