Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:52:23.183Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Attributing mental states to story characters: A comparison of narratives produced by autistic and mentally retarded individuals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Helen Tager-Flusberg  and
Kate Sullivan
Helen Tager-Flusberg*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts
Kate Sullivan*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts
*
Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02 125-3393
Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02 125-3393
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigated narrative abilities and their relation to theory of mind in autistic and mentally retarded subjects, who were matched for their linguistic competence on standardized measures of comprehension and production. We asked 27 autistic, 27 mentally retarded, and 17 normal subjects (whose age range matched the verbal mental age ranges of the developmentally disordered groups) to tell the story from a wordless picture book. Following their spontaneous narratives, a set of probe questions was asked about the story characters' feeling states. The autistic and mentally retarded subjects were also given a standard test of false belief. The main findings were that, when closely matched on language ability, no significant group differences were found on measures of narrative length, use of lexical cohesion devices, and mental state terms. On the probed questions, the autistic and mentally retarded subjects gave fewer appropriate emotion responses than the normal subjects, and the autistic subjects had difficulty explaining the emotional states correctly. For the autistic sample, the narrative measures were significantly correlated with performance on the theory of mind task. The findings are interpreted in terms of the contributions of both linguistic and social–cognitive factors in narrative ability.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , July 1995 , pp. 241 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

American Psychiatric Association (1987). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-III-R]. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar
Astington, J. (1990). Narrative and the child's theory of mind. In Britton, B. & Pellegrini, A. (Eds.), Narrative thought and narrative language (pp. 151–171). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
August, G. J., Stewart, M. A., & Tsai, L. (1981). The incidence of cognitive disabilities in the siblings of autistic children. British Journal of Psychiatry, 138, 416–422.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M. (1987). The acquisition of narratives: Learning to use language. Berlin: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bamberg, M., & Damrad-Frye, R. (1991). On the ability to provide evaluative comments: Further explorations of children's narrative competencies. Journal of Child Language, 18, 689–710.Google Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”? Cognition, 21, 37–46.Google Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1986). Mechanical, behavioral and intentional understanding of picture stories in autistic children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, 113–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. (1988). On the ability to relate events in narrative. Discourse Processes, 11, 469–497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R., & Slobin, D. I. (1993). Different ways of relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Britton, B. K., & Pellegrini, A. D. (Eds.). (1990). Narrative thought and narrative language. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J., & Feldman, C. (1993). Theories of mind and the problem of autism. In Baron-Cohen, S., Tager-Flusberg, H., & Cohen, D. J. (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from autism (pp. 267–291). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Capps, L., Yirmiya, N., & Sigman, M. (1992). Understanding of simple and complex emotions in non-retarded children with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 33, 297–321.Google Scholar
Folstein, S., & Rutter, M. (1977). Infantile autism: A genetic study of 21 twin pairs. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 18, 297–321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hemphill, L., Picardi, N., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (1991). Narrative as an index of communicative competence in mildly mentally retarded children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 12, 263–279.Google Scholar
Hobson, R. P. (1993). Understanding persons: The role of affect. In Baron-Cohen, S., Tager-Flusberg, H., & Cohen, D. J. (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from autism (pp. 204–227). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hobson, R. P., & Lee, A. (1989). Emotion-related and abstract concepts in autistic people: Evidence from the British Picture Vocabulary Scale. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 19, 601–623.Google Scholar
Kail, M., & Hickmann, M. (1992). French children's ability to introduce referents in narratives as a function of mutual reference. First Language, 12, 73–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kernan, K. T., & Sabsay, S. (1982). Semantic deficiencies in the narratives of mildly retarded speakers. Semiotica, 42, 169–193.Google Scholar
Kernan, K. T., & Sabsay, S. (1987). Referential first mention in narratives by mildly mentally retarded adults. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 8, 361–369.Google Scholar
Landa, R., Folstein, S. E., & Isaacs, C. (1991). Spontaneous narrative-discourse performance of parents of autistic individuals. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 34, 1339–1345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loveland, K. A., McEvoy, R. E., Tunali, B., & Kelley, M. L. (1990). Narrative story telling in autism and Down's syndrome. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 8, 9–23.Google Scholar
Loveland, K., & Tunali, B. (1993). Narrative language in autism and the theory of mind hypothesis: A wider perspective. In Baron-Cohen, S., Tager-Flusberg, H., & Cohen, D. J. (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from autism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1992). CHAT Manual. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Psychology.Google Scholar
Marchman, V. (1989). Episodic structure in the linguistic encoding of events in narrative: A study of language acquisition and performance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? New York: Dial Press.Google Scholar
Mayer, M. (1973). Frog on his own. New York: Dial Press.Google Scholar
Nwokah, E. E. (1982). “Once upon a time” – Aspects of story-telling in normal and retarded children. Language and Speech, 25, 293–298.Google Scholar
Reilly, J., Klima, E., & Bellugi, U. (1990). Once more with feeling: Affect and language in atypical populations. Development and Psychopathology, 2, 367–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Semel, E., Wiig, E. H., & Secord, W. (1987). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - Revised. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Shatz, M., Wellman, H., & Silber, S. (1983). The acquisition of mental verbs: A systematic investigation of first reference to mental state. Cognition, 14, 312–321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snedecor, G. W., & Cochran, W. G. (1967). Statistical methods (6th ed.). Ames: Iowa University Press.Google Scholar
Stein, N., & Glenn, C. G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children. In Freedle, R. (Ed.), New directions in discourse comprehension (Vol. 2). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Tager-Flusberg, H. (1992). Autistic children's talk about psychological states: Deficits in the early acquisition of a theory of mind. Child Development, 63, 161–172.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tager-Flusberg, H. (1995). “Once upon a ribbit”: Stories narrated by autistic children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13, 45–59.Google Scholar
Tager-Flusberg, H., & Sullivan, K. (1994). Predicting and explaining behavior: A comparison of autistic, mentally retarded and normal children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 35, 1059–1075.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed