Autistic children understand seeing and wanting

Autistic children were assessed for their understanding of seeing and wanting. In Experiment 1, they judged whether a target was visible to each of two observers (a Level 1 task of visual perspective-taking) and which of two targets each observer would identify as “in front” (a Level 2 task). The autistic children performed as well as normal children of the same verbal mental age on both tasks. In Experiment 2, autistic children identified the emotion that familiar situations would elicit, expressed a selective preference or desire, and reidentified that desire despite an outcome that thwarted it. Their performance was similar to that of normal and retarded children equated for verbal mental age. An explanation is offered for autistic children's difficulty on some psychological tasks and their relative success on others.