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The autistic child's impaired conception of mental states

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Paul L. Harris
Paul L. Harris*
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
*
Reprint requests should be sent to: Paul L. Harris, Department of Experimental Psychology, South Parks Rd., Oxford, OX1 3UD, U.K.
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Abstract

I argue that Mundy and Sigman (1989) are right to question Leslie's (1987) explanation of the autistic syndrome, but that they do so for the wrong reasons. They assert that there is a lag between the emergence of joint-attention and pretence. However, evidence for the lag is equivocal because it depends on the behavioral criteria for each skill. Moreover, even if there were a lag, it could be argued that the relatively early appearance of joint-attention simply shows that a decoupling device is available before its recruitment for pretence. More problematic, with regard to Leslie's theory, is the finding that autistic children can engage in certain forms of pretence. This result suggests that autistic children suffer not from a general incapacity to conjure up imaginary entities or properties, but from a more specific impairment in the ability to imagine mental states that they are not currently experiencing.

Type
Open Peer Commentaries
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , July 1989 , pp. 191 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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