Walking into the classroom Johnny says to his
teacher, “Your
tie is ugly!”
Chris can't seem to explain how he is feeling.
He is either doing “awesome” or
he is “awful”; there is no middle ground.
When asked why she ran from her parents, Maria
says, “I don't
know” and is unable to explain her behavior.
You are talking with a teenager who does not notice that you have
looked at your watch several times and yawned. He continues to
ramble on,
oblivious that you are giving clear signals that you would like
the conversation to end.
When a fellow student asks Judy, “Could you talk any louder?” she
says “Yes,” and talks even louder than she already was
doing.
Hector pushes another child and does not seem to care that he
has hurt someone else. Nor can he understand why he is being punished.
Linda just can’t seem to tell a white lie, even when it is appropriate
to avoid hurting another’s feeling. “Do you like my cake,” asked
Grandma. “No it is very dry,” replied Linda.
Desean is an easy target for being taken advantage of by others.
Mean-spirited peers often tell him outlandish lies that he believes.
These scenarios or ones similar to them may be
familiar to you. All of us have occasional difficulties regulating
our behavior, understanding
others’ perspective and using correct social skills. However,
individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit the above
challenges much more often. These difficulties across domains (cognitive,
behavioral, social, and emotional) may manifest in many different ways.
This may include being naive and a target for bullying or teasing,
not understanding emotions, being extremely literal and missing abstract
content, having a limited ability to regulate behavior based on what
others are doing or saying, and having difficulty understanding nonverbal
behavior.
As toddlers, typically developing children begin
to develop the ability to take another person’s perspective, to understand that others
have separate thoughts, desires and beliefs, and to modify their own
behavior by taking into account what others might be thinking or feeling.
In the field of special education and psychology these skills and abilities
have been called “theory of mind.” The following list presents
an outline of this theory of mind module.
