THEORY OF MIND IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WITH NORMAL DEVELOPMENT, AUTISM AND MENTAL RETARDATION

Abstract

The present study was designed to evaluate the theory of mind in preschool children with normal development, autism or mental retardation in terms of the teachers’ views on the mental ability, school adaptation, social and physical competences. Pre-school teachers (n=27) were requested to evaluate children with normal development (n=426), mental retardation (n=30) or autism (n=39) in their classes in terms of adequacy of mental ability, school adaptation, social competence and physical competence as well as school attendance while the results were compared with the theory of mind. It was found that there was a significant difference between the children who were found to be adequate or highly adequate in mental, physical, social and school adaptation by their teachers and those who were found to be inadequate or quite inadequate in theory of mind story tests in terms of qualitative and quantitative data. 

Keywords: theory of mind; teachers’ perspective; preschool children

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