Children's understanding of illness is complex and undergoes developmental changes between the ages of 4 and 7. Educational interventions that provide age-appropriate factual information and peer group discussions regarding illness processes might be effective in improving knowledge of illness among young children.

No abstract

Many studies have documented poor understanding of intuitive psychology among children with autism; however, few have investigated claims of superior understanding of intuitive physics said to be evident in this group. This study aimed to investigate the reported differential preference of intuitive psychology and intuitive physics among children with autism by employing three tasks each with a psychological and a physical condition. In order to gain a detailed developmental picture the study compared children with autism, an age matched comparison group, and typically developing preschoolers, 7-year-olds and 10-year-olds. Results demonstrated that children with autism preferred to employ physical causality when reasoning about novel physical and psychological events. Furthermore, their performance on a multiple-choice task confirmed their impairment in intuitive psychology whilst highlighting a superior ability to reason about physical phenomena in relation to all other comparison groups. The theoretical implications of this potential cognitive strength are discussed.

This study investigated intuitive concepts of biology, physics and psychology in typical preschoolers (N = 23), children with autism (N = 20) and children with Down's syndrome (DS; N = 18). Three tasks from Peterson and Siegal (1997) (false belief (Baron‐Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985), false photo (Zaitchik, 1990) and innate potential (Gelman & Wellman, 1991)) were employed. A further three tasks (perception (Slaughter & Gopnik, 1996), balance (Siegler, 1976) and illness (Kalish, 1998)) were included to gain insight into the similarities and differences in understanding across groups of children and within each domain. Preschoolers performed well on both the intuitive psychology tasks, children with autism performed poorly on these tasks, and children with DS performed well on the perception task but poorly on the false belief task. By contrast, performance on the physics and biology tasks was not significantly different across groups. These findings support the argument that cognitive development is domain‐specific and highlight the need for further research in this area.

No abstract