Baron-cohen✅ Flashcards
Aim:
Testing for advance theory of mind in high functioning adults with either autism or Asperger’s (whether or not their theory of mind is impaired)
Also would females be better than males?
IV:
- autism
- Tourette’s
- or normal control group
DV:
Performance on eye task (and other tasks)
Why choose pps with Tourette’s?
-similarities between autism and Tourette’s
E.g. normal intelligence, suffered with disorder from childhood, difficulty forming relationships, males are affected more than females
What did they ensure that both Tourette’s group and autism group had completed?
The theory of mind test that relates to a 6 year old theory of mind (had to pass this test)
Design:
Independent measures
Type of experiment:
Quasi
Pps:
- 16 with high functioning autism/ Asperger’s (sampled through advertisement)
- 50 normal (random sample draw from subject panel and Cambridge uni)
- 10 with Tourette’s (sampled through advert in London clinic)
Eye task:
- 25 photographs of female and male faces (all same size) (black and white) (same region of face used)
- 3 seconds to look at face and had to decided (between basic and complex adjectives), how person was feeling
Results
- Autism group didn’t score as high as Tourette’s and normal (16.3 correct answers to 20.3/20.4 correct answers)
- a number of pps in control group scores full marks
What was done to validate reading eyes task?
AS group TS group had to complete strange story task
Strange stories task:
- had to answer questions if brief story they were given
- asked questions about character’s thoughts or physical events
Results of strange stories task:
Tourette’s made hardly any errors at all (if any)
Autism/ Asperger’s made frequent errors
What does the strange story take give the eye task? (Validity wise)
Concurrent validity- same results/ findings were found
What were the other tasks they asked AS group only to complete?
Gender recognition of eyes
Basic emotion recognition
Gender recognition of eyes: (for AS group only)
Had to identify gender of someone in photo
Not testing theory of mind (just face perception)
Pps performed normally on this task
Basic emotion recognition task: (for AS group only)
- Image of whole face
- Had to identify emotions (wasn’t measuring theory of mind just recognition of emotions!)
- pps performed normally
Gender results (female compared to male)
Females performed better in normal group
Normal males performed better than males with TS or AS
Conclusions:
Adults within AS group did have an impaired theory of mind
Normal females better than normal males on theory of mind
Intelligence is not linked to performance (some of the AS group has university degrees).
