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Brief Report: Test–Retest Reliability of Cognitive, Affective, and Spontaneous Theory of Mind Tasks Among School-Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

The present study evaluates the test–retest reliability of six theory of mind (ToM) tasks that measured cognitive, affective, and spontaneous ToM in 7 to 11 year-old children with autism spectrum disorder. Our results revealed considerable variation in test–retest reliability depending on the type of ToM task, which ranged from poor to good with the majority of the measures exhibiting moderate reliability. Results inform which common measures of cognitive ToM should be selected versus avoided in future intervention work, suggest our measure of spontaneous ToM should be used more widely in intervention and ToM research more broadly, and indicate more work is needed to develop reliable measures of affective ToM. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.

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Funding

Funding for this study was provided by the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number K99/R00HD071966. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRF 00074041) to M. Altschuler. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors would like to thank Dr. Ami Klin for helping us learn the SAT coding scheme, the staff and students who assisted with collecting and scoring these measures, and to particularly thank the children and families who participated in this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Melody R. Altschuler

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Melody R. Altschuler

  3. Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Boston Children’s Hospital, Two Brookline Place, Brookline, MA, 02445, USA

    Susan Faja

  4. Department of Pediatrics/Division of Developmental Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Susan Faja

Authors
  1. Melody R. Altschuler
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  2. Susan Faja
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Contributions

Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data analysis was performed by SF. The first draft of the manuscript was written by MA and both authors revised previous versions of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Susan Faja.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from parents of all individual participants included in the study and all children provided their assent.

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Altschuler, M.R., Faja, S. Brief Report: Test–Retest Reliability of Cognitive, Affective, and Spontaneous Theory of Mind Tasks Among School-Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 52, 1890–1895 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05040-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05040-6

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