caa a22 4500 386339368 CHVBK 20180307111743.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e198907 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0954579400000389 doi S0954579400000389 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0954579400000389 Harris Paul L. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford The autistic child's impaired conception of mental states [Elektronische Daten] [Paul L. Harris] I argue that Mundy and Sigman (1989) are right to question Leslie's (1987) explanation of the autistic syndrome, but that they do so for the wrong reasons. They assert that there is a lag between the emergence of joint-attention and pretence. However, evidence for the lag is equivocal because it depends on the behavioral criteria for each skill. Moreover, even if there were a lag, it could be argued that the relatively early appearance of joint-attention simply shows that a decoupling device is available before its recruitment for pretence. More problematic, with regard to Leslie's theory, is the finding that autistic children can engage in certain forms of pretence. This result suggests that autistic children suffer not from a general incapacity to conjure up imaginary entities or properties, but from a more specific impairment in the ability to imagine mental states that they are not currently experiencing. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989 Development and Psychopathology Cambridge University Press 1/3(1989-07), 191-195 0954-5794 1:3<191 1989 1 DPP https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579400000389 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579400000389 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Harris Paul L. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Development and Psychopathology Cambridge University Press 1/3(1989-07), 191-195 0954-5794 1:3<191 1989 1 DPP CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge