Abstract

The first purpose of the present studies was to compare the ability of autistic children to understand false belief with that of normal and mentally retarded children. Sally-Anne false belief tasks were used in Exp. 1. Autistic children performed less than normal and mentally retarded children, but the difference between the autistic and mentally retarded children were not significant. Similar results emerged when Smarties tasks were used in Exp. 2. The second purpose was to investigate whether the children understand their own false beliefs better than other's. Responses to "own false belief" were compared with those to "other's false belief" questions in Exp. 2. There were no evidence that children understand their own false belief better than other's. The last purpose was to investigate whether autistic children could learn to understand false belief In Exp. 3, children were taught about the principles underlay false belief concept. All three groups were able to pass transfer tasks of false belief following teaching. Overall improvement was less in the mentally retarded group than in the autistic and normal groups. The results suggest that teaching the principles undelay false belief concept is effective for autistic children.