Introduction:

This study aimed to explore aspects of cognitive mentalizing in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in comparison with neurotypically developing children. Additionally, it examined the influence of age on cognitive mentalizing abilities in both groups.

Material and methods:

The study sample comprised 67 children with ASD and 46 neurotypical children. CARS-2 was used clinically to diagnose and select children with symptoms of ASD, after confirming that their diagnosis of ASD met the DSM-5 criteria. Experimentally, false-belief tasks were adopted to assess the performance of children with ASD and neurotypical children in cognitive mentalizing in the first and second order.

Results:

The findings showed that children with ASD had low performances in cognitive mentalizing compared to their neurotypical peers. However, these performances were above average in first-order, and significantly lower in second-order cognitive mentalizing, which indicates that most of these children had only developed basic mentalizing abilities. Conversely, most of them suffered from significant difficulties in cognitive mentalizing, especially those based on second-order reasoning. Thus, the data analyzed revealed that age differences in ASD and neurotypical children were not related to aspects of their cognitive mentalizing.

Conclusions:

Our findings confirm the presence of cognitive mentalizing impairments in children with ASD and highlight the importance of developing and implementing targeted interventions to enhance mentalizing abilities, as well as social and communication skills, in individuals with ASD.