This study supports earlier findings that individuals with AS/HFA have difficulties attributing mental states in context, but seem to have significantly fewer difficulties inferring physical states. The fact that the clinical group also used significant longer reaction time and needed significantly more prompt questions to solve the tasks relative to the control group may also be related to their problems in understanding mental states. However, the possibility remains that these difficulties could represent a separate factor - or a distinct 'cognitive style'- suggesting that at least some individuals with AS may be generally slow in solving cognitive tasks.

Although a number of advanced theory of mind tasks have been developed, there is a dearth of information on whether performances on different tasks are associated. The present study examined the performance of 21 children and adolescents with diagnoses of Asperger syndrome (AS) and 20 typically developing controls on three advanced theory of mind tasks: The Eyes Task, the Strange Stories, and the Stories from Everyday Life. The participants in the clinical group demonstrated lower performance than the controls on all the three tasks. The pattern of findings, however, indicates that these tasks may share different information-processing requirements in addition to tapping different mentalizing abilities.

The aim of the present study was to assess the ability of 21 children and adolescents with Asperger syndrome (AS) of normal intelligence to infer mental states in a story context using Happe's Strange Stories test. The participants in the AS group were compared with an age-matched control group (N=20) of normally developing children and adolescents on a test of social understanding. The test material comprised social communication such as Pretence, Joke, Lie, White Lie, Figure of Speech, Misunderstanding, Persuasion, Irony, Double Bluff and Contrary Emotions, Appearance/Reality and Forgetting. As compared to the controls, the participants in the AS group performed less well on these tasks, and answered fewer correct mental state inferences, but performed well on a physical state control task. This study supports the main finding of earlier studies, showing that even individuals with AS of normal intelligence have problems in using mental state terms context-appropriately when tested on the Strange Stories test.