Title Details

Patricia Howlin is Professor of Clinical Child Psychology at the Institue of Psychiatry, King’s College, London. She is the author of numerous books and articles on intervention in autism, including Children with Autism and Asperger Syndrome (1998). 

Simon Baron-Cohen is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, UK, and one of the co-discoverers of the 'theory of mind' deficit in autism. His books include Mindblindness (1995), The Essential Difference (2003) and Autism and Asperger Syndrome: The Facts (2009).

2 Visual Perspective Taking 9

Level 1: Simple Perspective Taking 10

Level 2: Complex Perspective Taking 14

3 Conceptual Perspective Taking 17

Level 3: Seeing Leads to Knowing 21

Level 4: True Belief 44

Level 5: False Belief 65

Level 6: Embedded Beliefs 106

Appendix 128

Bibliography 137

Postscript 140

Index 145

“Overall, I think this book would be helpful for any professional working with younger children (around 4-12 years) who are on the Autism Spectrum, in developing their social skills through using theory of mind.”  (ACAMH, 26 March2015)

‘In their scholarly introduction to the book the authors review an impressive number of training studies using different types of teaching aids. Informed by scientific evidence, and without any hype, they offer the best of these in The Workbook. It contains teaching aids in picture and story form that are bound to inspire teachers. The general approach is to build up a sequence of skills in line with the sequence observed in typical development; from joint attention, to pretend play, to perspective taking, to understanding emotions, desire and more complex informational mental states such as knowledge and ignorance, and finally complex second order beliefs (eg: “he thinks that she believes he is telling the truth”). It is with these complex mental states that the new workbook has expanded most over the previous one.

‘This manual provides an invaluable source of ideas and techniques on how to teach children and adults with autism about mental states, and it never loses sight of the need to link this teaching to their social skills in everyday life.’
—Professor Uta Frith, University College London, UK

“The Workbook joins the authors’ seminal Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read: A Practical Guide for Teachers and Parents in providing research-based protocols for developing and advancing mentalizing skills and social cognition in children with autism spectrum conditions. It extends the program provided in the book, offering scientifically validated, though clear and simple-to-use, principles for the understanding of informational states, as well as illuminating stories, examples and activities, promoting the generalization of the principles acquired.

“The Workbook is highly recommended for parents, teachers, and clinicians wishing to base their work on rigorous scientific knowledge of how the understanding of others’ minds works, and how this can be improved in children on the autistic spectrum.”
—Dr Ofer Golan, Head of the Child Clinical Program, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

In their scholarly introduction the authors review an impressive number of training studies using different types of teaching aids. Informed by scientific evidence, and without any hype, they offer the best of these in the workbook. It contains teaching aids in picture and story form that are bound to inspire teachers.

‘This manual provides an invaluable source of ideas and techniques on how to teach children and adults with autism about mental states, and it never loses sight of the need to link this teaching to their social skills in everyday life.
—Professor Uta Frith, University College London, UK

This is a much-awaited revision of Howlin, Baron-Cohen, and Hadwin's 1999 volume Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read that includes expanded lessons and concepts to teach high-functioning children with autism about mental states. The approach is importantly developmental – based on prior research and progressive sequences of concepts and stages of instruction.  It includes multiple foci, including teaching about differences in perspectives, about beliefs, about knowing, about emotions, and more. No one thinks that teaching mental-state understandings will address all the social-cognitive challenges faced by children with autism, but understanding the mental states of self and other is an acknowledged and crucial challenge for these children (and adults) and one that this workbook carefully and effectively addresses. It is a lively and practical book that will be a tremendous resource for parents as well as educators.
—Henry Wellman, Harold W. Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan

The Workbook joins the authors’ seminal Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read: A Practical Guide for Teachers and Parents in providing research-based protocols for developing and advancing mentalizing skills and social cognition in children with autism spectrum conditions. It extends the program provided in the book, offering scientifically validated, though clear and simple-to-use, principles for the understanding of informational states, as well as illuminating stories, examples and activities, promoting the generalization of the principles acquired.

The Workbook is highly recommended for parents, teachers, and clinicians wishing to base their work on rigorous scientific knowledge of how the understanding of others’ minds works, and how it can be improved in children on the autistic spectrum.
—Dr Ofer Golan, Head of the Child Clinical Program, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

The difficulties faced by children with autism in understanding the workings of other minds are instinctive and pervade all aspects of social development. This practical workbook applies research that shows that such a developmental approach may be helpful in laying the foundations for reciprocal social understanding. It will be useful to parents and teachers and other professionals working with children with autism.
—Richard Mills, Research Director, Research Autism, UK