A psychometric investigation of the multiple-choice version of Animated Triangles Task to measure Theory of Mind in adolescence

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  • Naja Kirstine Andersen
  • Martin Køster Rimvall
  • Jeppesen, Pia
  • Mette Bentz
  • Jens Richardt Møllegaard Jepsen
  • Lars Clemmensen
  • Rikke Kart Jacobsen
  • Else Marie Olsen

The Animated Triangles Task (AT) is commonly used to measure Theory of Mind (ToM). AT can be scored by clinicians based on participants’ verbal responses (AT-verbal) or using a multiple-choice paradigm (AT-MCQ). This study aimed to evaluate the validity of the less time-consuming AT-MCQ. To do this, we examined agreement and correlations between the AT-MCQ and the original AT-verbal scores in 1546 adolescents from a population-based sample. As a supplementary analysis of known-groups validity, we examined if AT-MCQ was as sensitive as AT-verbal in detecting ToM-limitations in 54 adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), using register-data. The agreement between AT-verbal and AT-MCQ varied markedly across test items. Scores on the two scoring methods were weakly correlated. Both scoring methods weakly detected differences between adolescents with and without ASD in this population-based sample. Most participants had appropriate responses on both AT-MCQ and AT-verbal, which yielded overall acceptable agreement. However, the feasibility of using either scoring methods to measure ToM-limitations in adolescents from the general population is questionable.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0264319
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume17
Issue number3
ISSN1932-6203
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2022 Andersen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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