Norwaymom asked about the theory of mind research.
Basically they found a couple things:
The Sally-Anne test requires very high receptive language skills. If
you tested non-autistic people with specific language impairment, they
did just as badly on it as autistic people. The constructions of "what
does he think that she thinks" and so forth are some of the most
complex in the English language.
Someone else did a study where they studied autistic children's
performance on a similar false-belief task, but the task required
drawing instead of language. On that task, autistic children did as
well as or slightly better than non-autistic people.
I can try to find the cites at some point but that's my answer to what Norwaymom asked for the meantime.
I believe that. My daughters would fail the Sally Anne test because they wouldn't be able to comprehend the scenario. It does sound a bit complex to describe to a kid who still struggles with wh* questions and until recently, pronouns. I actually have a hard time believing that even NT four year olds can take in that scenario and process it.
Thanks for getting back to me on this, gtto. I've been off line a couple days getting ready for and celebrating Norway's National Day (May 17th), so I missed this until today.
I've tried to do a home variation of this test with my son when he was 8-1/2, and he didn't answer correctly even when I explained it and gave him a couple more tries. He just got frustrated.
I never thought about the linguistic challenges of the test.
Thanks again.
P.S. Anyone wondering what the Sally-Anne test is can read about it on Wikipedia. They also include a link to a parody test, where the puppet who hides the ball is diagnosed as NT, with problematic behavior (manipulative and deceitful) and Theory of Mind problems because he actually can't understand why his antics aren't funny for the other person...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally-Anne_test
I always thought the test soundeed too simplistic and I honestly cannot imagine R failing it if he understood the question
So what u said Amanda makes a ton of sense