Later, studies showed that parents of autistic children display no more signs of mental or emotional illness than parents whose children have organic disorders. There are certain language disorders in autistic children. These children remain either mute or develop a kind of language that is not suitable for communication. Additionally, we have to take into consideration that effective participation in conversation requires the ability to make social inferences about the actions, beliefs and intentions of other people in order to understand their behavior and in order to respond appropriately. Social inferences through a theory of mind enable children to infer mental states such as beliefs and intentions, from the observable behavior of others and to make predictions on the basis of these inferences.
Autistic children can then adjust their own messages.
The term theory of mind is used because the ability to make inferences about the mental states of others is not directly observable. The evidence that children develop a theory of mind can be derived from children s pretend play and their use of mental constructs or paradigms. For example, children might pretend that a banana is a telephone. Here, two representations are involved because the children have to disconnect the use of the banana as a telephone from their perception of the banana as a real object. The latter perception is called first order representation.