Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

1-1-2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

First Advisor

Michael Voltaire

Keywords

autism; perspective taking; social stories; theory of mind

Abstract

This thesis investigated whether Social Stories used in conjunction with perspective- taking questions would lead to an improved Theory of Mind (ToM) in three participants diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We assessed participants’ perspective taking in a baseline condition, implemented a Social Story condition, and tested participants’ perspective taking again in a post-intervention condition. ToM was assessed using two variations of the false belief measures, namely the change-location and unexpected-contents paradigms. Each Social Story included three perspective-taking questions that required participants to infer a character’s emotion or perspective. Results indicated that participants’ percentage scores of correct responses increased markedly after the training compared to their percentage scores in the baseline condition. Limitations and implications are discussed in addition to recommendations for future research.

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