A developmental researcher administers the classic Sally-Anne false-belief task. Sally hides a marble in a basket, leaves the room, and Anne moves it to a box. Children are asked, "Where will Sally look for the marble?" In a sample of 40 typically developing children, most 3-year-olds answer "the box," whereas most 5-year-olds answer "the basket."
Baron-Cohen and colleagues found that many children with autism spectrum disorder fail false-belief tasks well past age 5. This finding has been interpreted as evidence for:
- A
An attachment disorder rather than a cognitive one
- B
A purely linguistic deficit unrelated to social cognition
- C
Below-average general intelligence in all individuals with autism
- Dcheck_circle
A specific delay or deficit in theory-of-mind development in autism
Explanation
Baron-Cohen's "mindblindness" hypothesis attributes characteristic social difficulties in autism to selective theory-of-mind deficits not reducible to general IQ or language.