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Abstract

Two groups of individuals, one with high-functioning autism and the other with Asperger syndrome were tested using Happé's Strange Stories Test of a more advanced theory of mind (Happé, 1994). This assesses the ability to interpret a nonliteral statement. Relative to normal controls who were IQ and age-matched, individuals with autism or Asperger syndrome performed less well on the task, while performing normally on a non-mentalistic control task. Individuals with autism or Asperger syndrome could provide mental state answers, but had difficulty in providing contextually appropriate mental state answers. Rather, their answers tended to concentrate on the utterance in isolation. This replicates Happé's result. Although the majority of both clinical groups provided context-inappropriate interpretations, the autism group had the greater difficulty. Results are discussed in relation to both weak central coherence and theory of mind.

Brief Report: Difficulty in Understanding Social Acting (But Not False Beliefs) Mediates the Link Between Autistic Traits and Ingroup Relationships

“…Third, the decoupling system of children and adults with HFASD shows a pervasive deficiency, as evidenced by their difficulties in understanding not only false beliefs, as was mentioned earlier, but also pretend play, irony and sarcasm, and white lies (e.g., Happé 1994; Jolliffe and Baron-Cohen 1999; Kaland et al 2002, 2005; Li et al 2011; MacKay and Shaw 2004; Pexman et al 2011; White et al 2009). …”

Beyond Sally's Missing Marble

“…Participants describe why they think the event took place, and their responses are coded for use of mentalistic explanations. Researchers have found that children and adolescents with developmental disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder) generally perform worse than typically developing controls matched on mental age (Happé, 1994;Jolliffe & Baron-Cohen, 1999;Velloso, Duarte, & Schwartzman, 2013;White, Hill, Happé, & Frith, 2009, but see Senju, Southgate, White, & Frith, 2009 for no differences). Three-to 12-year-olds with profound hearing impairments also demonstrate weaker understanding of sarcasm than matched controls, and even typically developing children fail to perform at ceiling (Peterson, Wellman, & Slaughter, 2012).…”

Faux Pas Detection and Intentional Action in Asperger Syndrome. A Replication on a French Sample

“…However, using advanced theory-of-mind tasks, difficulties in the attribution of mental states in people with HFA or AS have been observed (Happè 1994;Jolliffe and Baron-Cohen 1999;Abell et al 2000). In the Strange Stories test (Happè 1994), a task in which subjects had to understand irony, sarcasm, bluff and double-bluff, participants with HFA or AS were able to use mentalistic state terms, but they failed to use them in a contextually appropriate way.…”