Autistic Children Are Able to
Autistic Children Are Able to "read" minds: Study
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Apr 06 - Contrary long-standing belief, autistic children are able to interpret people's mental states based on facial expressions, if they are presented with animated rather than static examples, according to findings reported in the March-April issue of the journal Child Development.
A team led by Dr. Elisa Back, formerly at the University of Nottingham where the study was conducted and now at the University of Birmingham, compared the ability of autistic and non-autistic children to judge the mental state of a stranger by looking at different parts of the face displayed on a computer as static or dynamic images.
In one experiment, 18 autistic children aged 10 to 15 were able to attribute a range of mental states to dynamic and static facial expressions, but their performance fell short of non-autistic children, consistent with prior research.
The autistic children were better able to recognize mental states when the eyes and mouth conveyed the information than when these facial features remained static and neutral.
In a second experiment, 18 autistic 11- to 15-year-olds were "as successful as controls in recognizing mental states when the eyes were presented in isolation or in context of the whole face," the authors report.
"Surprisingly, autistic children seemed particularly reliant on the eyes and also on the mouth when making mentalistic inferences," Dr. Back said in a statement.
These findings, the team concludes, "challenge claims that individuals with autism spectrum disorder are impaired at inferring mental states from eyes." Child Development 2007;78.