Understanding of Prior Intention in the Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder

Background: Young children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have some understanding of others’ intention. However, it remains to be seen whether they understand others’ prior intention.

Objectives: This study extended the Carpenter et al. (2002) paradigm and explored whether young children with ASD benefited from others’ prior intention in social learning of a causal task.

Methods: Participants consisted of 24 young children with ASD (M= 46 months), 16 children with developmental delay (DD) who were CA- and MA-matched, and 24 typical developmental children (TD) who were MA-matched. They were diagnosed by a multidisciplinary team using ADI-R, ADOS and clinical judgment with DSM-IV. Children from each group were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: Prior Intention and No Prior Intention conditions. Children in the Prior Intention condition knew what the experimenter was trying to do (opened a series of containers) before demonstrating how to open a wooden box via two action steps; children in the No Prior Intention condition saw the demonstration paired with irrelevant actions on the containers.

Results: Results revealed that TD (91.7%) and DD (100%) children opened the box significantly more often than children with ASD (58.3%) in the Prior Intention condition. There was no group difference in No Prior Intention condition (ASD: 58.3%, DD: 75%, TD: 58.3%). ASD children opened the box equally frequently in the Prior Intention and No Prior Intention conditions. By contrast, children from the TD and DD groups were more successful in the Prior Intention condition than in the No Prior Intention condition.

Conclusions: The findings showed that contexts of prior intention facilitate observational learning in TD and DD children but not in young children with ASD. Theoretical and clinical implications were discussed in relation to their difficulty in understanding a person’s intention within the context of the task.