Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Children's Version): A Comparison Study between Children with Typical Development, Children with High-Functioning Autism and Typically Developed Adults

Abstract

Background/Aims: One of psychology's challenges is to develop and evaluate sensitive tests in the area of social cognition. Yet, there are few available scales that can measure mild deficits in social understanding, especially for typically developing (TD) populations. The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (children's version) was translated and adapted for use in the Greek language [RMET-G (child)]. The aim of this study was to examine in the Greek language the qualitative and quantitative differences between TD youngsters and those with high-functioning autism (HFA), as well as the difference between TD children and TD adults. Methods: An interview-based psychometric study was conducted. Participants completed the RMET-G (child), constituting 3 groups: TD children older than 8 years, children with HFA and TD adults. Results: 103 participants completed the study. The results demonstrated that TD adults scored slightly higher than TD children, and children with HFA scored lower than their TD peers. Children with HFA, however, were able to recognize many of the pictures shown in the test. Conclusion: The results of this study, which were the first to be conducted in the Greek language, confirm findings of other studies in the literature conducted with the RMET in the English language.

A psychometric analysis of the reading the mind in the eyes test: toward a brief form for research and applied settings

“…Of note, this version of the Eyes Test is considered superior to earlier versions, largely on the grounds of reliability and validity evidence (see Baron-Cohen et al, 2001 ). The Eyes Test has been translated into a variety of languages including: Bosnian (Schmidt and Zachariae, 2009 ), French (Prevost et al, 2014 ), Greek (child version; Vogindroukas et al, 2014 ), Italian (Vellante et al, 2012 ), Japanese (Kunihira et al, 2006 ; Adams et al, 2009 ), Persian (Khorashad et al, 2015 ), Romanian (Miu et al, 2012 ), Spanish (Fernández-Abascal et al, 2013 ), Swedish (Hallerbäck et al, 2009 ), and Turkish (Girli, 2014 ).…”

The differential effect of perspective-taking ability on profiles of cooperative behaviours and learning outcomes

“…Therefore, we decided to administer the Read the Mind in the Eyes-Test (RME; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001) as a measure of cognitive perspective taking in addition to the two IRI-scales. The child version of the RME measures how well children can attune to the mental state of others (Vogindroukas, Chelas, & Petridis, 2014). For each of the 28 items, children are asked to attribute the relevant state of mind after having been presented with a photograph of a person's eyes.…”

A Further Look at Reading the Mind in the Eyes-Child Version: Association With Fluid Intelligence, Receptive Language, and Intergenerational Transmission in Typically Developing School-Aged Children

“…Although the test has been very widely used, especially in the adult version, data regarding psychometric properties are rarely reported and are controversial, especially with regard to internal consistency that was found to be low in four studies (Voracek and Dressler, 2006;Harkness et al, 2010;Müller and Gmünder, 2014;Hayward and Homer, 2017), and minimally acceptable or acceptable in five other studies (Serafin and Surian, 2004;Dehning et al, 2012;Vellante et al, 2013;Girli, 2014;Vogindroukas et al, 2014). To our knowledge, only four studies have investigated internal coherence in the children's version (Girli, 2014;Müller and Gmünder, 2014;Vogindroukas et al, 2014;Hayward and Homer, 2017), and no studies have ever been conducted on an Italian sample. Test-retest stability was found to be acceptable for both the adult (Vellante et al, 2013) and the child version (Hallerbäck et al, 2009).…”