Date of Completion

2021

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Neuroscience / Communication Sciences and Disorders

Thesis Type

Honors College

First Advisor

Patricia Prelock

Keywords

Theory of Mind, Autism, Social Stories, Development

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in social interaction and social communication (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). At the core of the social impairment is a likely deficit in the Theory of Mind (ToM). This study uses ToM measures to assess emotion recognition and desire-based emotions pre- and post-intervention in neurotypical and ASD children between the ages of 8 and 12 following nine weeks of social-cognitive intervention (i.e., individualized Social Stories). Results showed that neurotypical children have greater emotion recognition and understanding of desire-based emotion than children with ASD, and that children with ASD exhibit variable improvements in their ToM following social story (SS) intervention.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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