Autistic Childrens Difficulty With Mental Disengagement From an ObjectIts Implications for Theories of Autism 自闭症儿童精神脱离物体的困难：对自闭症理论的启示.pdfVIP

Developmental Psychology Copyright 1993 by Ihe American Psychological Association , Inc . 1993, Vol. 29, No . 3.498-51 0 0O12-I649/93/J3.OO Autistic Childrens Difficulty With Mental Disengagement From an Object: Its Implications for Theories of Autism Claire Hughes and James Russell Experiment 1 demonstrated that autistic Ss continue to fail a task originally designed as one of strategic deception when there is no opponent present: They perseveratively indicate the target object. We argue that this behavior is better explained in terms of failing to disengage from an object than in terms of a theory-of-mind deficit. To ensure that their difficulties were not due to failure to construe the task in a competitive manner, we ran a 2nd study, on detour reaching. Compared with control Ss, the autistic Ss had great difficulty with the task. We discuss autistic childrens difficulties with these 2 tasks in the light of recent evidence that autism is associated with failing executive tasks and argue that viewing the syndrome as an executive deficit has clear advantages. It has been proposed that childhood autism can best be char- implant a false belief into th e mind of another person , then it acterized as a deviance or delay in th e development of a theory must be the case that anybody who c