Social-cognitive abilities in children with lesser variants of autism : skill deficits or failure to apply skills?

The present study re-examined the ability of children with lesser variants of autism (classified as PDD-NOS) to infer emotions of other people and to describe others in terms of inner, psychological characteristics. It also explores the hypothesis that these children may have the skill to infer ment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European child & adolescent psychiatry 1999-12, Vol.8 (4), p.301-311
Main Authors: SERRA, M, MINDERAA, R. B, VAN GEERT, P. L. C, JACKSON, A. E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autism
Autistic children
Autistic Disorder - complications
Autistic Disorder - diagnosis
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child clinical studies
Children
Cognition Disorders - complications
Cognition Disorders - diagnosis
Cognitive ability
Developmental disorders
Emotions
Female
Humans
Infantile autism
Intelligence
Interview, Psychological
Male
Medical sciences
Mental states
Pervasive developmental disorders
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Role Playing
Severity of Illness Index
Skills
Social cognitive processes
Social Perception
Variants
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Description
Summary:The present study re-examined the ability of children with lesser variants of autism (classified as PDD-NOS) to infer emotions of other people and to describe others in terms of inner, psychological characteristics. It also explores the hypothesis that these children may have the skill to infer mental states of other people, but fail to use these skills spontaneously. Children with lesser variants of autism and normal control children matched for age, sex and intelligence were given three structured emotional role-taking tasks and asked to give two spontaneous descriptions of peers. The results showed that both groups did not differ with respect to their ability to infer other people's emotions in the structured role-taking tasks. In contrast, significant differences were found on the free person descriptions: the children with PDD-NOS used fewer inner, psychological characteristics to describe peers.
ISSN:1018-8827
1435-165X
DOI:10.1007/s007870050105