This study was designed to examine the developmental and cognitive correlates of theory of
mind (ToM) and emotion recognition ability in children with autism (N=20), with
pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) (N=20), and in
psychiatric control children (N=20). The diagnostic groups were person-to-person matched
on age and verbal IQ. The age of the children was between 8 and 18 years; their Full Scale
IQ was at least 65. The test battery included tasks for the matching and the context
recognition of emotional expressions, and a set of first- and second-order ToM tasks. The
relationships between composite domain scores and the subjects' age, Verbal IQ,
Performance IQ, verbal memory, visual memory, and gender were examined in bivariate and
multivariate analyses. Further, the subjects who reliably and consistently passed the tasks of
a domain and those who could not were compared on developmental and cognitive
characteristics. Overall, the results of the various analyses converged and indicated that
verbal memory, Performance IQ, age and gender were the best predictors of social cognitive
ability.