The Relationship Between Visual Perspective Taking and Imitation Impairments in Children with Autism

Abstract

Perspective taking (or role taking) refers to the ability of individuals to distinguish their own perspectives from those of others, and to make correct judgments about the latter. It comprises both the visual (perceptual) level at which the individual imagines what another person can see from a contrasting vantage point (Kurdek & Rodgon, 1975) and the socialcognitive (conceptual) level at which he or she assesses another person’s mental state (also referred to as the “Theory of Mind” or ToM; Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985). Visual perspective taking (VPT) is further differentiated into two levels, namely, the ability to understand that people have selective visual fields (Level-1) and the ability to understand that they have different views of the same object (Level-2) (Flavell, Everett, Croft, & Flavell, 1981). According to the hypothesis put forward by Baron-Cohen and colleagues (Baron-Cohen, 1988; Frith & Happe, 1999; Leslie & Frith, 1988), individuals with autism may suffer selective deficit to infer mental representations (referred to as meta-representation, Leslie, 1987), which may affect their ability to infer other’s mental state (ToM) and their own mental state (self-consciousness). However, they can still indicate other’s view in VPT tasks. Empirical evidence generally supports the hypothesis of a theory of mind deficit in autism (e.g., Baron-Cohen et al., 1985; Leslie & Frith, 1988; Perner, Frith, Leslie, & Leekam, 1989; Reed, 1994), but the results on VPT tests have been inconsistent. Some studies have demonstrated VPT deficit in autism (Hamilton, Brindley, & Frith, 2009; Reed, 2002; Warreyn, Roeyers, Oelbrandt, & de Groote, 2005; Yirmiya, Sigman, & Zacks, 1994), but others have found no such deficit (Baron-Cohen, 1989; Dawson & Fernald, 1987; Hobson, 1984; Leekam, Baron-Cohen, Perrett, Milders, & Brown, 1997; Leslie & Frith, 1988; Reed & Peterson, 1990; Tan & Harris, 1991). These contradictory findings may be due to differences in the task demands (Reed, 2002) and age of participants (Warreyn et al., 2005) among the studies, or to such methodological issues as the ceiling effect (Yirmiya et al., 1994). The first aim of the current study is thus to explore the possible reasons for these inconsistent results.