Mental State Term Comprehension of Desire Terms in ASD

These two items are intended to tap mental state term comprehension with specific regard for the desire terms “want” and “need”. Regarding the development of mental state term (use and subsequent) comprehension, a trend has been observed such that children first acquire terms of perception, emotion, and desire (e.g., see, look, happy, sad, like, love, want) which are followed by cognitive terms (e.g., know, think, believe, realize) which appear later in development (Astington & Baird, 2005; Booth & Hall, 1995; Frank & Hall, 1991) (for a description of development of mental state term comprehension for the cognitive terms “think”, “know”, and “believe”, see descriptions of items 7, 10, and 39).

Compared to cognitive terms, desire terms like “want” are both more frequent in maternal input to infants and toddlers and are more predictive of children’s later mental state talk and emotion understanding (Jenkins, Turrell, Kogushi, Lollis, & Ross, 2003; Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006; 2008). Children’s use of desire talk also precedes their talk about beliefs (Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002) and meta-analytic contrasts between the understanding of desires and beliefs “confirms a conclusion first advanced by Wellman and Whoolley (1990) and now advocated more widely…that, on comparable tasks, children correctly judge person’s desires before they correctly judge their beliefs” (Wellman & Lui, 2004, p. 528). These and other empirical demonstrations have led researchers to conclude the understanding of the verb “want” is one of the earliest developing mental state language achievements (Lillard & Flavell, 1992; Wilson, 2013). As Taumoepeau and Ruffman (2016) explain: “talk about desires (e.g., ‘want’, ‘like’) may be a good starting point for children to learn about mental states because desires are salient internal experiences and much of early life involves attempts to fulfill desires, particularly in comparison with cognitive states” (p. 115). This provides support for the understanding of the desire term “want” as an Early theory of mind competency. Although “need” is also a desire term, it nonetheless appears to be acquired subsequent to “want” (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1992) and, as such, is relegated to membership as a Basic theory of mind competency. Other later emerging cognates of “want” include, but are not limited to: care (about), crave, desire, hope, long for, and wish.

Mental state term comprehension of desire terms in ASD

Several studies suggest that whereas children with ASD tend to have great difficulty in their understanding and appropriate use of cognitive mental state terms (e.g., “think”, “know”, “believe”, “remember”), they may actually exceed neurotypical controls in their ability to produce desire terms and to explicitly reference the causes and consequences of desires (e.g., Tager-Flusberg, 1992; but see Broekhof, Ketelaar, Stockman, van Zijp, Box, & Rieffe, 2015 who found that compared to typically

1 developing children, children with ASD may have more difficulty understanding others’ desires when they conflict with their own). In addition, children with ASD tend to increase their use of desire (and perception) terms with increasing MLU but this is not true for cognitive terms (Tager-Flusberg, 1992). In fact, unlike the literature on cognitive terms, the majority of research on this topic concludes that children with ASD have a basic understanding of desire (Tan & Harris, 1991) and that understanding of mental state terms like “want” may be an area of strength (Tager-Flusberg, 192, p. 169). Finally, whereas desire terms have been found to occur most frequently in the mental state input of parents of children with ASD, cognitive terms are relatively rare (Kay-Raining Bird, Cleave, Curia, & Dunleavy, 2008). Although this suggests sensitivity to the language and intellectual levels of their children with ASD, it is possible that parents also make non-optimal conversational adjustments (Kay-Raining Bird et al., 2008; Venuti, de Falco, Esposito, Zaninelli, & Bornstein, 2012). Given the important role of caregivers for scaffolding mental state understanding through the introduction of slightly more advanced concepts (Bianco, Lecce, & Banerjee, 2015; Moore, Furrow, Chiasson, & Patriquin, 1994), one widely accepted notion is that once children’s understanding of desires is established “children will benefit more from talk about thoughts and knowledge” (Taumpoepeau & Ruffman, 2008, p. 285). (For suggestions about how to support cognitive mental state term comprehension in children with ASD, see descriptions of items 7, 10, or 39).

Mental state term comprehension of desire terms in ADHD

Very few studies have examined the understanding of desire state terms in ADHD and those that have focus primarily on the ability to make reference to mental state terms (a.k.a. internal state language) in narratives and the research is mixed. Rumpf, Kamp-Becker, Becker, and Kauschike (2012) found no difference between children with ADHD and typically-developing 8-12 year-olds. By contrast, Miranda, Baixauli, and Colomer (2013) found that adults with ADHD made fewer references to internal mental states than neurotypical controls in a narrative writing task. These data suggest the potential for weakness in the ability of individuals with ADHD to make use of mental states to facilitate cohesion in narrative construction. Of course, because these studies were limited to mental state use in narrative construction and because they did not isolate desire terms from cognitive or emotion terms, more research is necessary to elucidate cognitive mental state comprehension in ADHD more generally.

Mental state term comprehension of desire terms in DoHH

In terms of their production and comprehension of mental state terms, children who are DoHH appear to follow the typical developmental sequence: from terms of perception, emotion, and desire (e.g., see, happy, sad, like, want) which are followed by cognition terms (e.g., know, think, believe, realize) (e.g., Peterson and Slaughter, 2006). As is true for children with ASD, children who are DoHH tend to use desire terms more than their hearing counterparts. This overreliance may be due to the fact that 1) desires are developmentally earlier and/or easier to learn nonverbally and 2), from a functional standpoint, communicating about desires is prioritized because it can have immediate consequences (desires are met or not met) that may be imperiled in light of the frequent communication breakdowns experienced between DoHH children and their hearing parents (Rieffe & Terwogt, 2000). This pattern of early and relative strength in the comprehension and use of desire terms compared to cognitive state terms (e.g., ‘think’, ‘know’, ‘believe’, ‘imagine’) is similar to what is observed in children with ASD and similar recommendations follow to move children with a preponderance of desire terms to more challenging cognitive state terms. This is particularly important in light of the findings from multiple studies suggesting that it is not until cognitive state terms are acquired that children who are DoHH are able to pass false belief tasks and reason about and participate in more complex conversations about

2 the mind (e.g., Peterson & Slaughter, 2006). For more information about how to support the acquisition of cognitive mental state term comprehension in children who are DoHH, please see item descriptions for the cognitive mental state terms (i.e., items 7, 10, 39).

For more information about mental state term comprehension see the description of the Mental State Term Comprehension Subscale.

REFERENCES

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