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Autism
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Social communication in children with autism

The relationship between theory of mind and discourse development

Courtney M. Hale

Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA

Helen Tager-Flusberg

Boston University School of Medicine, USA, htagerf{at}bu.edu

This longitudinal study investigated the developmental trajectory of discourse skills and theory of mind in 57 children with autism. Children were tested at two time points spaced 1 year apart. Each year they provided a natural language sample while interacting with one parent, and were given standardized vocabulary measures and a developmentally sequenced battery of theory of mind tasks. The language samples were coded for conversational skills, specifically the child’s use of topic-related contingent utterances. Children with autism made significant gains over 1 year in the ability to maintain a topic of discourse. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that theory of mind skills contributed unique variance to individual differences in contingent discourse ability and vice versa, when measured concurrently; however, they did not predict longitudinal changes. The findings offer some empirical support for the hypothesis that theory of mind is linked to communicative competence in children with autism.

Key Words: discourse skills • social communication • theory of mind

Autism, Vol. 9, No. 2, 157-178 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1362361305051395
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