R Peter Hobson

..In Study 2, participants with autism were less accurate in responding to instructions involving contrastive deictic terms, and fewer responded accurately to indicative head nods...

..The findings suggest a way to reconcile conflicting reports of symbolic play deficits in young blind children, and may be relevant for explaining the association between autism and congenital blindness...

..We consider the implications for understanding the developmental psychopathology of autism...

..We propose a rebalancing of emotion theory that gives greater prominence to children's developing forms of interpersonal and intra-psychic relatedness...

..In the pursuit of such understanding, we may gain insights into typically developing infants' capacities for intersubjective engagement...

..Participants with autism were not less likely to show a basic form of dialogic resonance across successive utterances (the 'frame grab'), but more often elaborated their responses in an atypical manner...

..By contrast, and as predicted, children with autism were rated as showing less playful pretend involving self-conscious awareness of pretending, investment in the symbolic meanings given to play materials, creativity, and fun...

..In these settings, atypical third person pronoun usage seemed to reflect limited communicative engagement, but first person pronouns were relatively spared...

..We interpret the findings in terms of a link among children's capacities for intersubjective engagement, imitation, and learning new ways to relate to objects...

..Atypical forms of autism may yield insights into the development and nature of the syndrome...

..The results are discussed in relation to hypotheses concerning the interpersonal relations of women with BPD, and possible implications for their infants' development...

..The two groups were almost completely separate on a composite measure of identification. We consider the implications of these findings for typical and atypical development...

..We suggest that this process of identification is essential to self-other relations and grounds young children's developing understanding of minds...

..The study of limitations in these aspects of self-other relatedness among individuals with autism is pivotal for understanding the pathogenesis of the syndrome...

..In order to determine that any effects were specific to infants' behaviour in the interpersonal domain, we also tested their performance on tests of understanding means-ends relations and object permanence...

..Women with borderline personality disorder have conflictual interpersonal relations that may extend to disrupted patterns of interaction with their infants...

..If we can determine the way in which congenital blindness predisposes to features of autism, we shall be in a better position to trace the developmental pathways that lead to the syndrome in sighted children...

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..Limitations in creative, playful pretend among children with autism relate to their restricted interpersonal communication and engagement...

..There is evidence that psychopathology in mothers may be associated with dysfunctional mother-infant interactions...

..The results illustrate aspects of social-cognitive impairment that extend beyond the children's limitations in 'theory of mind' understanding...

..We discuss possible implications for theoretical perspectives on the early development of empathy in typically as well as atypically developing children...

..We interpret the findings in terms of a group difference in identification between conversational partners...

..It follows that we should be circumspect about generalizing from research on the therapeutic effectiveness of transference interpretations when what is meant may differ widely from study to study...

..These findings offer fresh insights into the nature of BPD and extend previous evidence concerning affected individuals' patterns of thinking and feeling about childhood attachment figures...

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