Books

Baron-Cohen, Simon. Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.

(From the back cover) Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read explores the relationship of "theory of mind" deficits to other areas of children's functioning and describes existing experimental work that has attempted to enhance the skills associated with understanding others' minds. Drawing on their own intervention programme, and providing detailed information about the teaching materials and strategies they use, the authors provide practical guidelines for helping children with autism spectrum conditions to improve their understanding of beliefs, emotions, and pretense.

The authors tackle specific problematic issues including

• how to interpret facial expressions
• how to recognise feelings of anger, sadness, fear and happiness
• how feelings are affected by what happens and what is expected to happen
• how to see things from another person's perspective
• hot to understand another person's knowledge and beliefs

This easy-to-follow graded teaching guide is of particular relevance to special needs teachers, educational and clinical psychologists, speech and language therapists, and carers of children with autism spectrum conditions.

Howlin, Patricia, Simon Baron-Cohen, Julie Hadwin. Teaching Children with Autism to Mind-Read: A Practical Guide. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, 1999.

(From the back cover) Theory of Mind in the ability to infer other people's mental states and to use this information to interpret speech and predict action. This practical book applies these mind-reading principles to children with autism, focusing chiefly on treating their social and communicative abnormalities. Guiding readers through the underlying experimental and clinical principles of this experimental theory, the authors provide practitioners with an adaptable and unique program for tackling behavioral problems in autistic children.

Jenison Public Schools. The Original Social Story Book. Ed. Gray, Carol et al. Arlington: FutureHorizons, n.d.
Jenison Public Schools. The New Social Story Book. Ed. Gray, Carol et al. Arlington: FutureHorizons, n.d.
Jenison Publish Schools. The New Social Stories: Illustrated Edition. Ed. Gray, Carol et al. Arlington: FutureHorizons, n.d.

These three books are collections of social stories which address a variety of common social situations, in school, at home, and around the community. The stories, written by high-school psychology students from the Jenison Public Schools in Jenison, Michigan, are general enough to be applied to many common situation, but will certainly need revision and added detail to make it more motivating and meaningful for each child and more applicable to each situation. Each book also provides a kit detailing how a social story is written so you can write you own. The Introduction to Social Stories on this site is based largely off of these kits. The last book, which I haven't personally read, adds illustrations and new text to the stories from The New Social Story Book.