Revisiting the Strange Stories: Revealing Mentalizing Impairments in Autism

A test of advanced theory of mind (ToM), first introduced by F. Happe (1994), was adapted for children (mental, human, animal, and nature stories plus unlinked sentences). These materials were closely matched for difficulty and were presented to forty-five 7- to 12-year-olds with autism and 27 control children. Children with autism who showed ToM impairment on independent tests performed significantly more poorly than controls solely on the mental, human, and animal stories with greatest impairment on the former and least on the latter. Thus, a mentalizing deficit may affect understanding of biologic agents even when this does not explicitly require understanding others' mental states.