Teaching story to children with high functioning autism: effect on the development of a theory of mind

Author: 
Akila Palani and Kala Samayan

This research examined whether children with autism could be trained to improve in understanding of emotions, understanding of beliefs and changes in their verbal communication. Three high functioning autism children in the age group of 4 to 5 years participated in the present study. Two Indian stories were taught to these children. The result indicates that all the 3 children showed a significant improvement in terms of comprehending and expressing the story with visuals and without visuals. This indicates, that we can teach emotions, and also beliefs to children with autism at an early stage as they start comprehending with visual feedbacks and generalize the concept and their by erasing their core area deficit theory of mind at least to some extent.

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