Do Autistic Children Lack a Theory of Mind?
… an aversion to physical affection. These children may also entirely fail to develop language, and any that is acquired is usually abnormal, such as echolalia (the tendency to repeat or echo precisely what they’ve just heard), echopraxia (to repeat the actions of others) or pronominal reversal (the tendency to use ‘I’ where ‘you’ is meant and vice versa) Autistic children also respond very negatively to any changes in their routines or environments. This severe disorder of childhood is rare, Rivito in 1989 and Fombonne in 1998 discovered that autism only occurs in approximately four in ten thousand children, and that boys out number girls by about three to one. They also found no relation to socio-economic status or race. The prevalence of autism is similar across different countries, income levels and ethnic groups. The central feature of autism was stated by Leo Kanner in 1943, “It is the inability to relate…in …
