自闭症儿童在社会互动和人际交往方面存在困难，这是一个现实问题，也是自闭症研究的重要课题之一。心理理论是解释自闭症儿童社交困难的一个重要理论，其揭示了个体如何推测他人的心理状态，包括信念、情感、愿望、意图和想象等。与心理理论相关的一个重要方面是元认知。元认知是对个体认知过程的监控。个体通过元认知可以更好地了解和有效地管理自身的感受和行为。元认知可以帮助个体管理自身认知过程，并有助于形成对外部世界的认知。因此，心理理论与元认知是儿童发展过程中重要的内容。

以往对自闭症者心理理论与元认知的研究多采用单一研究方法，即关注自闭症者在心理理论或元认知方面的问题，然而研究结论并不一致。有些研究表明，自闭症者的心理理论是完好的，而另外一些研究则表明自闭症者的心理理论是受损的；类似地，自闭症者的元认知是否完好也没有定论。心理理论和元认知本身是复杂的系统及具有层次的结构，而在以往的自闭症者心理理论和元认知研究中，往往将它们视为单一的变量，并没有对各层次进行探讨。因此，深入探讨自闭症儿童的心理理论和元认知的不同层次，对于理解自闭症儿童的心理理论或元认知受损的具体来源具有重要的科学意义和价值。

此外，尽管心理理论与元认知存在关联，目前的研究较少关注自闭症儿童的心理理论与元认知之间的内在联系，特别是实验研究相对缺乏。因此，有必要更全面、系统地探讨两者之间的潜在联系，从而为我们更好地理解自闭症发展的相应机制提供有益的线索和启示。因此，本论文将系统地探讨自闭症儿童的心理理论与元认知及二者之间的关系，这也将为目前有关这二者之间的关系的理论争论提供新的见解和补充。

本研究目的是探讨自闭症儿童的心理理论与元认知及二者之间的关系。同时，从儿童的干预而言，自闭症儿童的能力可能会受到其家长的心理理论和元认知能力的影响。自闭症具有高遗传性，我们推测自闭症儿童的家长也可能表现出较低的心理理论和元认知能力。因此，我们考察了自闭症儿童家长的心理理论与元认知，进一步探索自闭症儿童的心理理论与元认知的行为表现模式是否受到家长认知能力的影响。这对自闭症儿童的干预具有重要的实践意义和社会价值。

本论文分为两个部分。第一部分关注自闭症儿童的心理理论与元认知，包含五个研究。研究一探讨了自闭症儿童的基本心理理论能力。在此基础上，研究二和研究三探讨了自闭症儿童的外显和内隐心理理论。研究四和研究五探讨了自闭症儿童的客体和情绪元认知。具体而言，研究一采用视向提示任务和观点采择任务考察了自闭症儿童的基本心理理论能力，即社会性注意(心理理论的重要视觉信息来源)和视觉观点采择能力(心理理论的自我和他人角色的转化)。结果发现，自闭症儿童的社会性注意(眼部敏感性)和视觉观点采择能力没有明显下降。研究二从心理理论的不同成分角度出发，依次从简单到复杂任务探讨了自闭症儿童的外显心理理论能力，分别采用静态眼部任务、Yoni任务、和高阶失言任务。结果发现自闭症儿童的心理理论存在受损现象，主要体现在其情感成分方面，且高阶心理理论能力下降明显。研究三采用社会图形任务探讨了自闭症儿童的内隐心理理论，结果发现自闭症儿童的内隐心理理论能力与典型发育儿童差异不显著。自闭症儿童外显心理理论存在受损，其元认知是否也存在受损，我们进一步探讨了自闭症儿童的元认知问题。研究四采用自信度判断任务探讨了自闭症儿童的客体内隐和外显元认知能力。结果发现，自闭症儿童在客体内隐元认知上没有明显下降，但是在客体外显元认知上表现出明显下降。在研究四的基础上，研究五加入情绪因素，采用自信度判断任务探讨了自闭症儿童的眼部和面部的情绪内隐和外显元认知。结果发现自闭症儿童在眼部情绪的外显元认知方面表现出了一定的受损。具体而言，他们的愤怒情绪表现相对较低。然而，在眼部情绪的内隐元认知方面，自闭症儿童与典型发育儿童表现没有明显差异。进一步的实验中，当眼部换为面部时，自闭症儿童的面部外显情绪元认知表现也相对较低，但内隐情绪元认知表现与典型发育儿童没有明显差异。由此可见，自闭症儿童的眼部外显情绪元认知和面部外显情绪元认知表现均低于典型发育儿童，而内隐情绪元认知则与典型发育儿童表现相似。

从自闭症儿童干预的角度而言，对自闭症儿童家长的心理理论与元认知的考察具有重要的实践价值和社会价值。因为自闭症儿童家长是儿童的最初教育者，是儿童各项能力的主要干预者。因此，研究自闭症儿童家长是对自闭症儿童的心理理论与元认知能力受损的一个关键因素探索。以往研究往往忽略了这一重要点。如果仅从自闭症儿童本身探讨心理理论与元认知可能的受损会将其此方面的能力完全归于自闭症儿童本身，但是心理理论与元认知能力是可干预的能力，这就必然与养育环境有关，而直接有关的是自闭症儿童家长。对此，第二部分我们对自闭症儿童家长的心理理论与元认知及其关系进行了探讨。如果自闭症儿童的心理理论或元认知在某个层次存在受损，那么其家长是否也在此方面表现较低。为了更全面、更好地与自闭症儿童的研究进行表现模式上的对比分析，此部分的研究包含与自闭症儿童研究相似的五个研究。结果发现，自闭症儿童家长的视觉观点采择能力，外显心理理论的情感成分、高阶心理理论能力及内隐心理理论能力的表现较低。同时，自闭症儿童家长在面部情绪的外显和内隐元认知上的表现都较低。

综上所述，自闭症儿童的心理理论受损主要表现在心理理论的情感成分和高阶心理理论能力，相应地，元认知的受损主要表现在情绪元认知。自闭症儿童家长在心理理论的情感成分、高阶心理理论和情绪元认知上表现明显下降。但是自闭症儿童与其家长在这些任务上的相关并不显著。这表明，自闭症儿童和家长在心理理论和元认知上的行为表现模式相似。自闭症儿童可能存在受损，而家长只是表现较低，可能并不是受损。本研究的结果为自闭症儿童的社会适应和社会交往能力的干预提供了有力的实验证据，并为后续的干预提供了有价值的理论指导。这一研究不仅有助于深入理解自闭症儿童的认知机制，还可以为制定针对性的教育和干预策略以及进行有效的早期干预提供重要信息和参考。为了最大程度地改善儿童的发展，我们应该关注养育环境以及与之相关的家长认知能力。通过对家长的认知行为的整体培训，来营造良好的养育环境，从而使得儿童在早期得到最大程度的改善。

Children with autism spectrum disorders have difficulties with social interaction and interpersonal communication. These difficulties are genuine problems and are the essential topics of autism research. Theory of mind is a critical theory for explaining this difficulty in children with autism, with its exploration of how to infer the mental states of others, including beliefs, emotions, desires, intentions, and imagination. The theory of mind abilities possesses an inherent strength in effectively inferring the mental states of others, allowing individuals to predict and adapt to their behavior accordingly. An aspect closely related to the theory of mind is metacognition. Metacognition involves monitoring one’s cognitive processes, enabling a better understanding and effective management of one’s feelings and behaviors. It empowers individuals to regulate their cognitive processes and shape their perceptions of the external world.

Previous research on the theory of mind and metacognition in autism has mainly used a single-study approach, i.e., focusing on either theory of mind or metacognition in individuals with autism. However, the results of previous studies were inconsistent. Existing studies have yielded mixed findings regarding theory of mind abilities in autistic individuals, with some suggesting intact abilities while others indicating impairments. Similarly, metacognitive abilities in individuals with autism have shown a similar pattern, with some studies reporting intact abilities and others suggesting impairments. Moreover, previous research on the theory of mind and metacognition in autism has tended to treat them as a single variable, lacking in-depth exploration of each level. The theory of mind and metacognition themselves are complex systems and hierarchical structures. Therefore, an in-depth exploration of the different levels of theory of mind and metacognition in children with autism will undoubtedly have critical scientific implications for understanding the specific sources of mental process deficits in children with autism. It also provides new ideas and directions for conducting more in-depth and systematic research in the future.

In addition, fewer studies investigated the association between the theory of mind and metacognition in children with autism. Therefore, we need more comprehensive and systematic studies to explore the potential connections between theory of mind and metacognition, and the underlying mechanisms. These studies can provide valuable clues and insights to understand the corresponding mechanisms of autism development better. Notably,  the influence of cultural backgrounds on theory of mind and metacognition can vary to different degrees. Most previous studies examining the relationship between the two have been conducted in Western culture, while experimental studies in Chinese culture are relatively limited. Therefore, the present paper would investigate the theory of mind and metacognition in children with autism within the Chinese cultural context. By doing so, we aimed to enhance our understanding of the relationship between the theory of mind ability development and metacognitive development. Furthermore, this research endeavors to provide new insights and contribute to the theoretical debate on the relationship between theory of mind and metacognition.

This study aimed to explore the theory of mind and metacognition of children with autism within the Chinese cultural context. Additionally, considering the high heritability of autism, we extended our investigation to examine the theory of mind and metacognition in parents of children with autism. This approach aims to enhance our understanding of theory of mind and metacognition in children with autism from two perspectives: first, by exploring the potential similarities in performance patterns between children with autism and parents of children with autism; and second, by gaining insights into the implications for interventions targeting theory of mind and metacognition in children with autism. Also, because of the high heritability of autism, we examined the theory of mind and metacognition of parents of children with autism to better understand the theory of mind and metacognition of children with autism, as well as from the perspective of intervention for children with autism, in an attempt to explore further whether there are similarities between the performance patterns of the outward appearance type of children with autism and the performance patterns of parents of children with autism.)

This paper consists of two distinct but related sections. The first section focused on the theory of mind and metacognitive study of children with autism, encompassing five studies. Study1 explored factors associated with the theory of mind in children with autism. Studies 2 and 3 investigated the theory of mind of children with autism, exploring both extrapersonal and implicit aspects. Studies 4 and 5 explored object and emotion metacognition in children with autism. Study 1 used a visual cueing task and a perspective-taking task to examine two aspects that are closely related to children with autism’s theory of mind, namely social attention (an important source of visual information for the theory of mind) and visual perspective-taking ability (transformation of self and other roles for theory of mind). These findings demonstrated no decrease in social attention (eye sensitivity) and visual perspective-taking ability in children with autism. Study 2 explored the theory of mind abilities of children with autism from different components of the theory of mind, from simple to complex tasks, using a static eye task, a Yoni task, and a higher-order disfluency task. The findings indicated that children with autism exhibited impairments primarily in the affective component of theory of mind, with a significant decrease observed in higher-order theory of mind abilities. Study 3 explored the implicit theory of mind of children with autism using a sociogram task and found that the implicit theory of mind abilities of children with autism did not differ significantly from those of typically developing children. Building upon on the exploration of the theory of mind of children with autism, we further investigated the metacognitive issues associated with it. Study 4 explored the object implicit and explicit metacognitive abilities of children with autism using an assertiveness judgment task. The results found that children with autism did not show a significant decline in implicit metacognition but showed a significant decrease in extrapersonal metacognition. Based on Study 4, Study 5 added emotional factors and explored the emotional implicit and explicit metacognition of the eye and facial emotions in children with autism using the assertiveness judgment task. The results found that children with autism showed certain impairments in the extrapyramidal metacognition of eye emotions, particularly exhibiting relatively lower performance in recognizing anger emotions.. However, regarding implicit metacognition of ocular emotions, children with autism showed no significant differences compared to typically developing children. In a further experiment, when facial emotions were used for testing, children with autism had relatively lower performance on facial episodic emotion metacognition but no significant differences in implicit emotion metacognition performance compared with typically developing children. Hence, it can be concluded that children with autism commonly display reduced performance in visual episodic emotion metacognition and facial episodic emotion metacognition. However, their implicit emotion metacognition remains unaffected by the type of eye or facial emotion and is comparable to the performance of typically developing children. Thus, low performance on visual episodic emotion metacognition and facial episodic emotion metacognition is a common feature of children with autism, but implicit emotion metacognition is not influenced by eye or facial emotion type and is similar to the performance of typically developing children.

At the same time, from the perspective of interventions for children with autism, examining the theory of mind and metacognition of parents of children with autism has important practical and social value. Because parents of children with autism are the initial nurses of the child, they are the primary interveners of the child's various abilities. Therefore, studying parents of children with autism is a key factor in exploring the impaired theory of mind and metacognition of children with autism. Previous research has often overlooked this important point. Exploring possible impairments in the theory of mind and metacognition in autistic children alone would attribute this aspect of their abilities exclusively to the autistic child. Still, the theory of mind and metacognitive abilities are intervenable abilities that are necessarily related to the parenting environment and directly related to the parents of autistic children. The second part comprises five studies that investigate the theory of mind and metacognition in parents of children with autism. The results found that parents of children with autism had lower performance in visual viewpoint selection, the affective component of theory of mind, higher-order theory of mind competencies, and implicit theory of mind competencies.Specifically, parents of children with autism showed lower performance on both explicit and implicit metacognition of facial emotions compared with parents of typically developing children.

In conclusion, children with autism have impaired theory of mind, mainly in the affective component of the theory of mind, and impaired metacognition, mainly in object-extrinsic metacognition and emotional metacognition. Parents of children with autism also showed similar patterns to children with autism overall. The results provide strong experimental evidence for the intervention targeting social adjustment and social interaction skills in children with autism. They also provide valuable theoretical insights that can inform future intervention approaches. These findings contribute to our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms of autism and provide the necessary information for developing treatment plans and carrying out early interventions.