自閉症類群障礙症孩童與一般發展孩童心智理論能力與表現之比較

Assessments of ToM can be divided into two constructs: capacity and performance, which represent the ToM function in the laboratory and daily context, respectively. However, only few studies examine the ToM capacity and performance simultaneously in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children. Therefore, this study was to examine whether the differences exist in both ToM capacity and performance between children with ASD and TD children to fully capture the ToM of children with ASD. A total of 62 children aged 3 to 7 years, including 31 children with ASD and 31 TD children matched for their verbal ability, participated in this study. The Theory of Mind Task Battery and the Theory of Mind Inventory-2-Chinese version were administered to assess children's ToM capacity and performance, respectively. Two-way analysis of variance was used to examine whether there were significant differences in ToM capacity and performance between children with ASD and TD children. We found that significant differences existed in ToM capacity (F5.61, p = .021) and performance (F23.13, p ＜ .000) between children with ASD and TD children. Additionally, most of children with ASD were in the stage of the basic mental development, while most of TD children were in the stage of advanced mental development. This result suggests that children with ASD are one stage behind TD children in both ToM capacity and performance, although their verbal comprehension was at the same level of TD children. Results highlight the importance to assess ToM capacity and performance in children with ASD.