Is grammatical competence a precondition for belief-desire reasoning? Evidence from typically developing children and those with autism

Children with autism are thought to have a deficit in theory of mind. It is now widely regarded that theory of mind development has a strong relationship with language ability. In particular, current research has focused upon the syntactic aspects of language as a means of relating communicative competence and what is considered the culmination of theory of mind, the false belief task. This current study was an exploratory examination into the ability of 3 children with autism on the false belief task and 3 tasks considered precursors to false belief ability. Further language examinations sought to investigate how language ability may relate to their performance on these tasks. It was hypothesized that the ability to understand false belief tasks was not purely dependent upon linguistic formulation, but also utterance conceptualization. Language competencies at the Conceptualizer and Formulator levels of Levelt's model of speaking were assessed. The results challenge the current beliefs concerning the theory of mind deficit in individuals with autism and provide possible avenues for future research.