The Sally-Anne False Belief Task

### Experiment

An experiment was carried out to see if children with autism responded to these questions correctly. Three groups of children were tested (one at a time) on the Sally-Anne task.

Groups of children tested with the Sally-Anne Task
Participant groups | Participants | Average Age
Experimental group | 20 children with autism | 11 years 11 months
Control group 1 | 14 children with Down’s syndrome | 10 years 11 months
Control group 2 | 27 typically developing children | 4 years 5 months

Following accepted matching procedures, the children with autism selected for the task were a similar age to the children with Down’s syndrome but older than the neurotypical children. The IQ of the autistic children was higher than that of the neurotypical or Down’s syndrome children. This means that if the autistic children don’t pass the test, it is not because they have a lower intellectual level than the neurotypical or Down’s syndrome children.