Studying Autism: the 'Smartie tube' test

Question	Answer
Researcher	Perner et al
Hypothesis	Autistic children cannot guess what other people are thinking, even when they have had the same experience themselves. They have no ToM
Sample	Autistic children and normal children
Method	Shown a smartie tube, children are asked whats inside. They are surprised to be shown a pen is inside. Then asked what their friend will think is in the box
Results	Autistic children correctly answer 20% of the time; normal aged over 4, 100%
Conclusion	autistics will perform worse than ordinary children on a test that requires them to understand someone else has a belief that is different to theirs, even when they have been in the same position themselves
Evaluation	how do you explain the 20% that pass? if wording of the questions is changed autistics as young as 3 can pass, demonstrating that it was the cognitive demand that caused the result not lack of ToM

Resource summary

	Created by annabel_summerfield about 10 years ago