Previous studies have revealed a “theory of mind” impairment in children with autism. The aim of this study was to assess whether it is possible to intervene by teaching children with autism to understand the mental states of emotion, belief, or pretence. Results showed that it is possible to teach children with autism to pass tasks that assess emotion and belief understanding. Introducing unfamiliar materials in structurally similar tasks did not adversely influence teaching effects, either immediately after teaching, or 2 months later. However, teaching effects did not generalize to tasks in domains where children received no teaching. In addition, no significant progress in spontaneous pretend play resulted from teaching. These results indicate that children may be passing tasks using rules rather than any genuine understanding of the concepts involved.

The relationship between children's anxiety and cognitive biases was examined in two tasks. A group of 50 children aged 10 to 11 years (mean = 11 years, SD = 3.71 months) was given two tasks. The first tested children's selective attention (SA) to threat in an emotional Stroop task. The second explored facial processing biases using morphed angry-neutral and happy-neutral emotional expressions that varied in intensity. Faces with varying levels of emotion (25% emotion–75% neutral, 50% emotion–50% neutral, 100% emotion–0% neutral [prototype] and 150% emotion–0% neutral [caricature]) were judged as being angry or happy. Results support previous work highlighting a link between anxiety and SA to threat. In addition, increased anxiety in late childhood is associated with decreased ability to discriminate facial expression. Finally, lack of discrimination in the emotional expression task was related to lack of inhibition to threat in the Stroop task.