Aetiology of autism Flashcards
MMR vaccine
Link? – no supporting ev
refrigerator parenting
Cold, rejecting, emotionally unavailable
Concordance rates between sibs/fraternal twins approx. 3%
Concordance rates between identical twins ranges between 3- and 80% (small samples)
foetal testosterone
Higher foetal testosterone associated with higher levels of autistic symptoms in both genders, but esp. for boys
empathising and systemising
Autism and Asperger syndrome: below-average empathy and average/above average systemising
exec functions
Children with autism perf poorly on exec function tasks – display difficulties with planning and set-shifting
ToM explanations
‘False belief’ test should be able to cover Wing and Gould’s triad: o Socialisation (difficulty with social r’ships) o Communication (literalness) o Imagination (inability to suspend disbelief)
Autists predicted to fail false belief test
structure of Baron-Cohen’s test
Two dolls called Sally and Ann
Sally has a basket and Ann has a box
Sally puts her marble in the basket and leaves
When Sally is away, Ann puts the marble in the box
Sally’s going to come back now!
Where will Sally look?
Baron-Cohen et al. (1985)
Note that the Down’s and autistic groups were matched on verbal mental age – the autistic group had a mean verbal age of 5.5 years but chronological age of 12
problems with Baron-Cohen et al (1985)
Perhaps autistic children unable to get involved in story that required them to suspend disbelief
Perhaps thought that if Sally is doll, she has no mind and Q put is meaningless
How are criticisms met?
More exps that take them into account
Leslie and Frith’s test (1988)
Leslie (L), Frith (F), and child (C) all get together and put a penny under an upturned cup
F leaves the room
L and C conspire and put the penny under another upturned cup nearby
F returns
L asks C - where will F look for the penny?
They used a group with specific language impairment instead of Down’s
Result similar to Baron-Cohen et al. (1985)
Mitchell and Isaac’s (1994) task
Small dolls used - ‘Mum’ and ‘John’. And some props!
Mum has two bags of wool. She puts one in the drawer and the other in the cupboard
Mum leaves
John comes in, plays with the wool, and puts the bags back but they are swapped around!
Mum calls through to John. “I need one of the bags of wool! It’s the bag in the drawer”
Get Mum the bag she really wants
interpreted message literally rather than correctly
able to correct once prompted
This has a certain ecological validity
what about speech production?
Know from clinical observation that autistic children ‘naively honest’
Why?
Can’t take into account lies in relation to holding false belief
o Lies can lead victim of message to believe something that is false – so understanding that lies can serve to conceal truth from another person might only be possible if one understood that people hold beliefs that can either be true or false
Sodian and Frith (1992)
A ‘treat’ was put inside one of two small treasure chests.
Enter ‘nasty thief’! He demands the treat and asks the child - where is it?
Autistic children rarely lie to the nasty thief and will tell him where the treat is
But, in another experiment, autistic children could lock the treasure chest to prevent the nasty thief getting the treasure!
So - the autistic children were able to prevent the thief getting what they wanted but couldn’t use lies to achieve their goal
To me this is a clear sign that ToM explanations are very much in the tradition of theories of deficit
if autistic children have communication problems, then how do they get what they want?
Experimenter places desired toy on high shelf
Autistic children have two strategies
Ignore experimenter and use another object e.g. chair
“The other was to try to drag the experimenter over to the shelf with force, as though the experimenter were a heavy physical object that had to be shifted” (Mitchell; p86)
is ToM the whole story?
Happé (199) – should look at the skill of autists as well as their shortcomings when constructing theory
