Baron Cohen Flashcards
Area
Individual differences
Background
Autism- a lifelong developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with and relates to other people.
The triad of impairments:
- Difficulties with social communications.
- Difficulties with social interactions.
- Difficulties with social imagination.
Key definitions: theory of mind
Theory of mind: the ability to infer what another person is thinking or feeling.
Define the ceiling effect
Just because an adult can succeed on a test designed for 6 year olds, doesn’t mean they don’t have a problem with theory of mind.
Research method
Quasi experiment because high functioning autism and Tourette’s are naturally occurring.
Experimental design
Independent measures
Sample for group 1
16 people (13 males and 3 females) with high functioning autism. Mean age 28.6. Normal intelligence. They were obtained from an advertisement in the communication magazine and a variety of clinical sources.
Group 2 sample normal group
Control group
50 normal people from the general population of Cambridge (not the uni). They were selected at random from the subject panel held in the uni department. 25 male 25 female. Mean age 30. Normal intelligence.
Group 3 sample Tourette’s
Comparison with another neurological disorder. 10 people. 8 male 2 female. Mean age 27.77. Normal intelligence. From tertiary referral centre in London.
Location of tasks
Individually in a quiet room either in their own home, in a researchers clinic or in a laboratory at the university.
The eyes task and results
- Participants were shown 25 photos of the black and white eye region (all the same size) of a persons face for 3 seconds.
- They were asked ‘which word best describes what this person is thinking or feeling?’
- Underneath there were two mental state terms they had to choose from which were semantic opposites.
For reliability, the pairs of words were tested on a panel with 8 judges who all agreed on the target words.
People with high functioning autism had a lower mean score (16.3) than normal people (20.3) and people with Tourette’s (20.4).
Women performed better than men.
Strange stories task
- Participants presented with 2 examples of each of the 12 story types e.g. white lie, joke, figure of speech, irony.
- The participant asked to explain why the character said what they said.
- Answers scored as either correct or incorrect and as either involving mental states e.g. said it to fool her or involving physical states e.g. because the dog is big.
Control task and results
Gender recognition task: participants looking at the same sets of eyes as in the eye task but their task was to identify the gender of the person in each photograph.
Autistic: 24.1
Normal: 23.3
Tourette’s: 23.7
Basic emotion recognition task: participants shown photos of whole faces. 6 were used which displayed the 6 basic emotions : happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgust and surprise.
Conclusions
Adults with autism or Asperger syndrome have subtle deficits in their mind reading ability.
With normal adult population, females are better at mind reading than men.
Reliability
Internal:
Controlled- same photos presented (all black and white and same size), same instructions.
Inter-rater reliability:
Results were consistent between judges which ensured answers were correct.
External:
Quite small sample of autistic and Tourette’s.
