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This study introduces a novel linguistically simple, tablet-based, behavioral Theory of Mind (ToM) measure, designed for neurotypical (NT) and autistic children aged 4–10 years. A synthesis of five comprehensive reviews of existing ToM measures revealed significant gaps in their designs; the weaknesses include a mismatch between the operational and conceptual definition of ToM, high verbal demands in most measures, materials that are minimally interesting for children, and often a lack of psychometric evaluations. These findings call into question the suitability of most of the currently available ToM measures used in children, both with and without developmental disorders, such as children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For example, the assessment of ToM in children with ASD may require reduced reliance on complex language or social interaction that can be part of the diagnostic criteria of the condition. This newly designed ToM measure, developed in line with the “Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing” of the American Educational Research Association, is linguistically simple, tablet-based, suitable for children with ASD, and is available in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. With a sample of 234 participants, including 152 NT children and 82 children with ASD between 4 and 10 years of age, the new ToM measure's psychometric properties were preliminarily evaluated. Descriptive statistics, measures of internal consistency, inter-item correlation, and validity checks were conducted in both groups. Further inspections of the measure's scale- and item-level characteristics were conducted with the help of exploratory factor analyses (EFA), and item response theory (IRT) within the NT children's group. These preliminary evaluations suggest that the newly developed ToM measure possesses good psychometric properties and is both accessible and engaging for children. Further investigation with a larger group of participants is necessary to reinforce these initial results. This will allow item- and scale-level assessments within a wider range of autistic children. For this purpose, the task will be made freely available to the scientific community.

Compared to typically developing children, children with autism (ASD) show delayed production of wh-questions. It is currently controversial the degree to which such deficits derive from social-pragmatic requirements and/or because these are complex grammatical structures. The current study employed the intermodal preferential looking (IPL) paradigm, which reduces social-pragmatic demands. The IPL paradigm can help distinguish these proposals, as successful comprehension promotes the “pragmatics-origins” argument whereas comprehension difficulties would implicate a “grammatical-origins” argument. Additionally, we tested both the linguistic and social explanations by assessing the contributions of children's early grammatical knowledge (i.e., SVO word order) and their social-pragmatic scores on the Vineland to their later wh-question comprehension. Fourteen children with ASD and 17 TD children, matched on language level, were visited in their homes at 4-month intervals. Comprehension of wh-questions and SVO word order were tested via IPL: the wh-question video showed a costumed horse and bird serving as agents or patients of familiar transitive actions. During the test trials, they were displayed side by side with directing audios (e.g., “What did the horse tickle?”, “What hugged the bird?”, “Where is the horse/bird?”). Children's eye movements were coded offline; the DV was their percent looking to the named item during test. To show comprehension, children should look longer at the named item during a where-question than during a subject-wh or object-wh question. Results indicated that TD children comprehended both subject and object wh-questions at 32 months of age. Comprehension of object-wh questions emerged chronologically later in children with ASD compared to their TD peers, but at similar levels of language. Moreover, performance on word order and social-pragmatic scores independently predicted both groups' later performance on wh-question comprehension. Our findings indicate that both grammar and social-pragmatics are implicated in the comprehension of wh-questions. The “grammatical-origins” argument is supported because the ASD group did not reveal earlier and stable comprehension of wh-questions; furthermore, their performance on SVO word order predicted their later success in linguistic processing of wh-questions. The “pragmatic-origins” argument is also supported because children's earlier socialization and communication scores strongly predicted their successful performance on wh-question comprehension.