Mental Model: Understanding of Intentions by Children Aged 2–5 Years with Typical Development and at Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Introduction. The relevance of the problem is due to the importance of mental modelling abilities for social adaptation – understanding other people, their intentions, predicting further actions, and the ability to understand and reason about the causes of our actions.

Objective. To compare children's understanding of intentions based on unfinished ordinary and unusual actions, as well as children's understanding of the differences between intentional and unintentional actions of others.

Materials and methods. The following tasks were used to assess understanding of intentions: 1) Understanding intentions based on unfinished ordinary and unusual actions; 2) Understanding the differences between intentional and unintentional actions of others. The non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was used to assess the differences.

Results. The study involved 39 typically developing children (M = 2 years 5 months; mental age – 3 years 4 months) and 17 children at risk for autism spectrum disorders (M = 4 years 2 months; mental age – 2 years 3 months). The results of the study demonstrate a deficit in the mental model of children at risk for autism spectrum disorders in tasks involving understanding the differences between intentional and unintentional actions of others. Children at risk for autism spectrum disorders differ from typically developing children in their attempts to reach for a toy and turn away from it when it is intentionally or accidentally denied. At the same time, preschool children at risk for autism spectrum disorders can understand the intentional actions of others as well as typically developing children in tasks where they need to complete an adult's unfinished actions.

Discussion. The results of this study are consistent with those of previous studies, which have shown that preschool children at risk for autism spectrum disorders can understand the intentional actions of others as well as typically developing children because children in both groups completed the task of completing an adult's unfinished actions. Despite this, children at risk for autism spectrum disorders had difficulty understanding the intentionality of refusal compared to typically developing children

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