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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Autism
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1449995

Characterization of implicit and explicit mind-reading in children with autism based on eye movements

Provisionally accepted
Haidan Lu Haidan Lu 1*Juanli Niu Juanli Niu 2佳欣 Wang 佳欣 Wang 3Min Liu Min Liu 1Mingyu Xu Mingyu Xu 4
  • 1 East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
  • 2 Yangfan School, Shanghai, China
  • 3 College of Child Welfare, Changchun Humanities and Sciences College, Changchun, China
  • 4 Brain and Behavioral Research Unit of Shanghai Institute for Pediatric Research,Ministry of Education (MOE)-Shanghai Key Laboratory for Children’s Environmind Health, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: This study aimed to investigate differences in mind-reading abilities between children with autism and typically developing children across various tasks. Methods: Sixteen children with autism (aged 5-8 years) were compared to 16 typically developing children matched in language ability. The unexpected location task and unexpected content task were used to assess implicit and explicit mind-reading abilities using an eye tracker and illustrated storybooks. Results:For implicit mind,using differential looking socres shows a no significant difference between the scores of children with autism and typically developing children in the implicit tasks (P=0.399).However,the pupil size show some significant difference between two groups.Second, for the explicit,a significant difference between the scores of children with autism and typically developing children in the explicit tasks (P=0.006). Additionally, only a significant correlation between implicit and explicit mind-reading abilities in children with autism in the unexpected location task was found. Conclusion:The mechanism of implicit mind-reading still not very clear. Pupil-Linked arousal response can be consider as a further tool. Further research on implicit and explicit mind-reading abilities is warranted.

    Keywords: children with autism, implicit mind-reading, explicit mind-reading, Eye Movements, false belief conditions

    Received: 16 Jun 2024; Accepted: 30 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lu, Niu, Wang, Liu and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Haidan Lu, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.