A Matter of Perspective: An Exploratory Study of a Theory of Mind Autism Intervention for Adolescents

Abstract

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the capacity to make attributions of mental states such as thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of others. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder are often characterized by delayed or impaired Theory of Mind development and poor social skills. A positive correlation between Theory of Mind skills and social skills exists, but effective interventions that generalize these skills have proven to be a challenge in the field. Furthermore, few effective interventions exist to increase Theory of Mind skills in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. The Teaching Theory of Mind curriculum is a 12-week intervention aimed at increasing social understanding in children and adolescents with deficits in Theory of Mind. To date, there have not been any empirical studies to test the efficacy of the curriculum. The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficacy of the Teaching Theory of Mind curriculum on adolescents with autism spectrum disorder and explore the impact of the intervention when addressing various domains of social understanding. Results, though tentative, indicated that parents saw improved social understanding following intervention, though direct measures of Theory of Mind with adolescent participants did not change significantly.

Deceptive behaviour in autism: A scoping review

“…Although two studies in the current review reported that autistic children can be taught to engage in gameplay and pro-social verbal deception, it is unclear whether this represented improved ability and understanding as opposed to displaying learned behaviours associated with deception. However, the finding that ToM and executive function training increased ability on a gameplay deception task is consistent with other research showing that autistic children and adolescents who receive ToM or executive function training demonstrate improved social outcomes (Kenworthy et al, 2014; Lecheler et al, 2021 but also see Marraffa & Araba, 2016).…”

Challenges in determining whether youth with autism spectrum disorder have been sexually abused: implications for forensic interviewing

“…ToM deficits are common in youth with ASD (Lecheler et al , 2021) and are often linked to referential communication impairments (Sidera et al , 2018). ToM refers to the ability to make inferences or attributions about one’s own and others’ thoughts, feelings, perceptions and beliefs (Lecheler et al , 2021; Sevlever et al , 2013; Sidera et al , 2018).…”

“…ToM deficits are common in youth with ASD (Lecheler et al , 2021) and are often linked to referential communication impairments (Sidera et al , 2018). ToM refers to the ability to make inferences or attributions about one’s own and others’ thoughts, feelings, perceptions and beliefs (Lecheler et al , 2021; Sevlever et al , 2013; Sidera et al , 2018). Individuals with ASD who have ToM deficits can be at risk for CSA because of an inability to understand the motives, emotions or deceptions of CSA offenders (Lecheler et al , 2021).…”

“Howling at the scrabble-board”: exploring classroom literature from an autistic viewpoint

“…Altered Theory of Mind has been suggested as an element in autism for many years (for example, Baron-Cohen, 1997;Charman and Baron-Cohen 1995;Karmiloff-Smith et al 1995;Frith 2003) and a difference in the development of ToM is considered a core challenge in autism (for example, Seidman andYirmiya 2018, in Whalon andCox 2020). Recent studies continue to explore ToM "impairment" in both children (for example, Lecheler et al 2020) and adults (for example, Rosenthal et al 2019), frequently positioning these studies within explorations of support for ToM (Holopainen et al 2019;Lecheler et al 2020) or exploring ToM as an element to examine or decode autism presentation (Livingston et al 2019). Reading is a complex task involving the application of knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, together with accessing of prior knowledge, the generation of inference, self-monitoring of understanding and the integration of each of these with information from the text (Kim 2017), with ToM increasingly recognised as an important element to the successful management of this task (Atkinson et al 2017;Dore et al 2018).…”