Theory of Mind, linguistic recursion and autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

In this paper we give the motivation for and discuss the design of an experiment investigating whether the acquisition of linguistic recursion helps children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) develop second-order false belief skills. We first present the relevant psychological concepts (in particular, what Theory of Mind is, and what it has to do with false beliefs) and then go on to discuss the role of language in our investigation. We explain why compositional semantics seems of particular relevance to second-order false beliefs, and why training children with ASD in the comprehension and production of (recursive) possessive noun-phrases and sentential complements might be beneficial. After our discussion of these fundamental ideas motivating the study, we outline our experimental program in more detail.