To evaluate the claim that correct performance on unexpected transfer false-belief tasks specifically involves mental-state understanding, two experiments were carried out with children with autism, intellectual disabilities, and typical development. In both experiments, children were given a standard unexpected transfer false-belief task and a…

A study involving 36 British children with autism, 21 children with severe learning difficulties, and 54 controls found correlations between false belief and subtractive reasoning tasks; however, results indicate ability in subtractive reasoning was a necessary but not sufficient component of successful performance in the false belief tasks.…