A Comparative Study on the Advanced Ability of Theory of Mind among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Learning Disabilities and General Children

• Main Authors: Chang,Ying-Ying, 張盈盈
• Other Authors: Hou,Chen-Tang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/95407841622025730327

碩士 === 國立臺中教育大學 === 特殊教育學系碩士班 === 98 === The purposes of this study were to explore the performance of the advanced ability of theory of mind among children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, children with learning disabilities and social difficulties, as well as general children with social difficulties. The study adopted questionnaire investigation. The 90 participants were third to sixth graders of elementary schools sampling from Central Taiwan. The social skill and behavior characters scale for elementary and high junior school student was used to screen out social difficulties of children with learning disabilities and general children, and the advanced theory of mind test was used to evaluate the advanced ability of theory of mind. The data were analyzed with one-way ANOVA and Scheffe or Dunnett C post hoc multiple comparisons to compare the difference of performance on the advanced ability of theory of mind among Autism Spectrum Disorder children, learning disabilities, and general children, as well as with t-test to compare the performance differences between middle grade（third and forth grade）and high grade（fifth and sixth grade）children. The Q & A information was also collected and analyzed. The main findings of this study were as follows: 1.The performance of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the advanced ability of theory of mind, the second-order false belief subtests, subtests recognition of faux pas, tell a lie from a joke subtest scores, and total score, were significantly worse than the performance of general children with social difficulties. 2.The performance of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in the advanced ability of theory of mind, the second-order false belief subtests and tell a lie from a joke subtest scores, were significantly worse than the performance of the children with learning disabilities and social difficulties. 3.The performance of children with learning disabilities and social difficulties, the second-order false belief subtests, tell a lie from a joke subtest scores, and total score, were significantly worse than the performance of general children with social difficulties. 4.For the general children with social difficulties, the higher grader the better on their performance of advanced ability of theory of mind; and the children with learning disabilities and social difficulties perform likewise. However, the performance of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder did not increase according their grades.