Baron and Cohen

Question 1

What does neurotypicality mean?

Answer 1

Considered normal/healthy brain functioning

Question 1

What is neurodivergence?

Answer 1

Brains that function in ways that are considered different from normal/healthy

Question 2

Who first described autism?

Answer 2

Leo Kanner

Question 3

What is Asperger’s?

Answer 3

Mild form of autism, high functioning

Question 4

What did Wing and Gould find?

Answer 4

Examined presence of autism - found in a large group of children
- Difficulty with social interaction, communication and imagination

Question 5

What is the Theory of Mind?

Answer 5

The ability to attribute mental states to others which allows us to think about why people do the things that they do

Question 6

What was Frith’s theory?

Answer 6

• Children develop theory of mind at around 2 years
• Associated with pretend play
• Autistic children - reduced capacity to play

Question 7

What was Wimmer and Perner’s paradigm for ToM?

Answer 7

Child has to be aware that other people can have different beliefs about a situation

Question 8

What was the procedure?

Answer 8

‘Sally-Anne task’
- Sally places ball in her box and walks away
- Anne places ball in her own box
Where will Sally look for the ball first?

Question 9

What was the Sally-Anne task followed by?

Answer 9

False belief question, Reality question and memory question

Question 10

What were the findings?

Answer 10

Memory and Reality questions - all children, correct responses

False belief question - autistic children 80% failed

Question 11

What is the Mindblindness Hypothesis?

Answer 11

Autistic people have difficulty starting up a dedicated neurocognitive mechanism responsible for mind reading/theory or mind/mentalising

Question 12

What are the main criticisms of Baron and Cohen?

Answer 12

ToM does not provide a full account of autism
ToM deficits aren’t specific to autism
ToM deficits aren’t universal to autism

Question 13

Why isn’t the ToM a full account?

Answer 13

Doesn’t emphasise restricted repertoire of interests
Insistence of sameness
Peaks of abilities

Question 14

What is the Executive Dysfunction hypothesis?

Answer 14

Difficulty of planning how to achieve goals and tendency to become fixated on one activity or object

Question 15

What is Weak Central Coherence?

Answer 15

Difficulty combining several pieces of information to form an overall understanding of the issues

Question 16

What is the monotropic mind?

Answer 16

Fewer interests tend to be aroused at any time and attract more processing resources

Question 17

Why isn’t ToM universal?

Answer 17

Not all autistic children failed the S-A task

Question 18

What did Happe find?

Answer 18

Neurotypical children pass FBTs at 3.62 years
Children with ASD pass FBTs at 5.5 years

Question 19

What can performance can be affected by?

Answer 19

• Explicitness of instructions
• Relevance of social cue to solve the task
• Primary deficit- disturbance in the motivational and executive processes that prioritise orienting to social stimuli
• Secondary deficit - decreased expertise in social cognition and ToM is the result of the primary deficit