Story understanding involving theory of mind in children with autism spectrum disorder

Purpose: to evaluate the story understanding involving Theory of Mind in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: this a cross-sectional study conducted on a sample of 13 children with ASD, aged five to ten years old. The children's book “Claro, Cleusa. Claro, Clóvis” was used, whose characters are geometric figures that interact in a social context. The story was narrated by a speech pathologist and then the child was encouraged to produce his/her own retelling and answer questions related to the narrated events. The Wilcoxon and Spearman’s correlation tests were applied. A significant level of 0.05% was considered. Results: on average, 8.2 (28.7%) sentences were retold. Physical terms were mentioned more frequently than mental ones (p=0.002). Regarding the questions, there was predominance of correct answers regarding the identification of characters, setting, and context; and difficulty in interpreting events involving mental states. Conclusion: in this study, children had difficulty retelling important parts of the story and interpreting facts involving the Theory of Mind.