高功能自閉症幼兒心智理論與親子心智言談

Abstract

學齡前階段是幼兒社會互動能力快速發展的時期，然而擁有趨近或甚至於超過一般幼兒智商的高功能自閉症幼兒，卻在社會互動溝通的環節上產生障礙。過去許多研究指出心智理論的缺陷是造成自閉症兒童在社會互動溝通上產生障礙的可能主因。有鑑於此，那麼最親近高功能自閉症幼兒的母親們該如何協助他們在心智理論的發展。本研究的研究對象以四歲至六歲半的二十位高功能自閉症幼兒為實驗組、二十位一般幼兒為對照組。運用心智理論量表來了解高功能自閉症幼兒和一般幼兒心智理論發展的差異，以及透過母親和幼兒共同閱讀圖畫故事書探討親子心智言談的方式，並且進一步探究兩組幼兒心智理論的發展與親子心智言談的相關性。本研究主要發現有三：

一、在生理、心理年齡相當下，高功能自閉症幼兒在心智理論測驗得 分和一般幼兒相比明顯較低。 二、在親子共讀語句長度相當下，高功能自閉症組心智言談方式在次 數以及頻率方面較一般組明顯較低。 三、高功能自閉症組和一般組幼兒在心智理論測驗表現和親子心智言 談都達到高度相關性。

綜合以上所述，根據本研究結果可以進一步討論如何透過提升親子共讀的品質來協助高功能自閉症幼兒心智理論的發展。Preschool age is the critical time for children to improve the quality of social interaction. Even though children with high functioning autism, in general, have higher intelligence, they still have difficulties in social interaction. Many previous researches have indicated that the reason why high-functioning autism children are facing this obstacle primarily lies in lack of competence of theory-of-mind. How to build up the children’s theory of mind would be a challenge of their mothers. The purpose of this research is to find out whether there is a correlation between the children’s performance in theory-of-mind test and mothers’ talk on mental states or not.

Forty kindergarteners have participated in this research which includes twenty autism children and twenty normal children. The groups of children were requested to take the test on theory of mind, and then to read a storybook with their mothers. The results as follows:

1. The children with high-functional scored significantly lower than normal groups on the theory of mind test. 2. With the same amount of utterances, the counting numbers and frequencies of high-functional group’s mental states are both lower than normal group. 3. The correlations between children’s theory-of-mind test scores and mothers’ talk on mental states are high in both groups.

Based on the results, the researcher discussed how to promote mental states in joint book reading to help children with high-functioning autism to develop the ability of theory-of-mind.