Designing a Curriculum for Executive Functions and Evaluating its Effectiveness on Improving the Theory of Mind in Children with High Performance Autism Spectrum Disorder

The purpose of this study was to design and determine the effectiveness of educational package of executive functions on improving the levels of theory of Mind in children with high Performance autism spectrum disorder.

The research method is semi-experimental with post-test pre-test with control group. The statistical population of the present study was children with autism disorder aged 6 to 12 years in Urmia (274 people) in the academic year of 2019-20 were from the exceptional school for children with autism, out of the target population, Out of the total target population 40 high-performance autism were selected using Gilliam Autism Rating Scale(Gilliam,1995) and randomly assigned to two experimental (20) and control (20) groups, and the Hutchins Mind Theory Questionnaire(Hutchins et al., 2012) was completed by parents of both groups. After performing the pre-test, the experimental group was trained in the executive functions program. The program was designed by researchers and consisted of 24 sessions in which 4 skills (working memory, inhibition, flexibility and attention training) were taught, At this stage, the children in the control group did not receive any training. The post-test was performed again and the data obtained from the pre-test and post-test were analyzed using analysis of covariance.

The data showed a significant difference(p < 01) between the control and test groups in the post-test of variable theory of Mind scores after adjusting the effect of pre-test of theory of Mind .

Based on this study, it can be suggested that improving the executive functions can increase the levels of theory of Mind.