Baron-cohen Flashcards
what is the key theme of this study?
Understanding disorders
what is it testing?
it is an advanced test of theory of mind
what type of people is it researching?
High functioning adults with autism or Asperger syndrome
What is the triad of impairments for those with autism?
-Impairment in imagination
-Impairment in social relationships
-Impairment in social communication
what are the supposed causes of autism?
-hereditary (genetic link)
-refrigerator parenting
-MMR vaccine
-diet and hormones
-actions whilst pregnant e.g smoking,drinking
Mind blindness
Autistic individuals are sometimes described as having mind blindness as they appear to be unable to read minds.
Theory of mind
The ability to read minds or to make inferences about what other people believe to be the case in any given situation allows us to predict what they will do.
lack of theory of mind
Lacking this basic ability would make social interaction very difficult and the absence of a theory of mind would explain the core deficits of autism.
How has theory of mind been tested previously?
The Sally-Ann test
The Sally-Ann test
If the child says/points to ‘the basket’ they demonstrated that they have ‘theory of mind’ because they can perceive that Sally, who was out of the room, still believes the marble is in her basket.
If the child says/points to ‘the box’ then they may lack theory of mind because they are assuming that Sally is thinking what they are thinking. (The child is unable to accommodate Sally’s false belief)
Strange stories task (Happe 1994)
This is a fairly advanced test for theory of mind aimed at older children, involves asking children questions about the emotions and characters in unfamiliar stories.
“high functioning”
Normal/average IQ, do posses theory of mind as they can pass standard theory of mind tasks (e.g Sally-Ann task) designed for 6 year olds
what was the eyes task made for?
To see if high functioning individuals with autism/aspergers do have a deficit in theory of mind skills.
What was the aim of this study?
-This study attempted to provide support for a cognitive explanation of autism and particularly that adults lack advanced theory of mind skills.
-The theory of mind task used in this study is “The eyes task” ; people have to choose the best word to describe the emotion displayed in the photograph of a person’s eyes.
Sample of group 1 ( autism )
16 people with high functioning autism/ AS: 13 male, 3 female. Mean IQ of 105.3 (normal)
how were group 1 recruited?
Via an advert in the national autistic society magazine. (self selected sample)
Sample of group 2 ( no condition )
50 age matched controls, 25 male, 25 female, neurotypical with no history of psychiatric disorders, presumed to be of normal intelligence
how were group 2 recruited?
Taken from population of Cambridge via random sampling.
Sample of group 3 ( Tourette’s )
10 patients with Tourette’s, 8 female, 2 male, age matched with autistic group (1) Mean IQ of 103.5-normal
how were group 3 recruited?
Sample from a clinic in London. Self selected sample.
Why did Baron Cohen use ps with tourette’s?
Tourette’s syndrome and autism are similar, affect same part of the brain, using both would control some of the extraneous variables.
What did both Tourette’s and Austistic ps have in common?
-normal intelligence
-suffered with disorder since childhood
-had disorders that disrupted schooling & peer relations
-had disorders supposed to originate in the frontal lobe
-both most likely to affect males
Ps in both groups passed what?
Autism & Tourette’s groups both passed Theory of Mind test based on 6 year-old Theory of mind skills (Sally-Ann test)
Method and design
Independent measures design & Quasi Experiment- IV naturally occurring and not manipulated
two control tasks
the eyes task, strange stories task (random order to avoid order effects)
where were subjects tested?
in a quiet room either at home, in a clinic or in a lab on their own
Independent variables
-autism
-Tourette’s syndrome
-normal (neurotypical)
-gender in normal group
Dependent variables
-correct identification of emotion
-correct identification of gender
Hypotheses
Patients with Tourette’s syndrome would be unimpaired on this advanced theory of mind test, but ps with autism/ Asperger’s syndrome would show significant impairment on this test.
Ps who had difficulty completing the eyes task or strange stories task should also have difficulties when completing other task.
Normal females may be superior to normal males in emotion perception.
Procedure
The eyes task, the strange stories task and 2 control tasks (gender recognition of the eyes task and basic recognition task) were presented in random order to all ps.
The eyes task
(all ps completed this task)
Comprises photographs of the eye region of 25 different faces (male and female). The photographs were taken from magazines and were standardised (same size 15x10cm)all black and white, all same region. (from midway along nose to just above brow) Each photo was shown for 3 seconds.
question asked for eyes task:
“Which word best describes how this person is thinking/feeling?”
Happe’s strange stories task
Ps in groups 1 and 3 (autism and Tourette’s) were also tested on Happe’s strange stories task, an advanced theory of mind aimed at older children.
Involves asking children questions about the emotions and intentions of characters.
Why was Happe’s strange stories task done?
To check validity of the Eyes task as a test of theory of mind.
If it is a valid test then performance on the eyes task should correlate with performance on strange stories(concurrent validity)
reason for control tasks
in order to check whether difficulties with the eyes task might be due to other factors, ps in groups 1 and 3 were given 2 control tasks. (autism and Tourette’s)
The gender recognition task
(control task 1 )
Looking at 2 sets of eyes and identifying the gender to check whether poor performance on the eyes task was due to general deficits in face perception rather than a lack of theory of mind skills. (max score=25)
The basic emotion recognition task
(control task 2)
Looking at whole faces which displayed the 6 basic emotions; happy, sad, disgust, afraid, surprise, angry) this was done to check if difficulties on the eyes task were due to difficulties with basic emotional recognition.
This task not same as eyes task as it
1-involves whole faces,
2- only tests 6 basic emotions rather than fuller range of mental states.
Eyes task results
Autism group= 16.3 mean correct answers
Normal= 20.3 mean correct answers
Tourette’s= 20.4 mean correct answers
what do these results show?
The normal and Tourette’s ps performed identically, whereas autistic ps were significantly less able to cope.
Findings from the eyes task
Individuals with autism struggled with this task.
In normal group females performed significantly better than men.
Findings from basic emotion recognition task
No differences between groups
Findings from gender recognition task
No differences between groups
Findings from Happe’s strange stories task
No subjects with Tourette’s syndrome made any errors, but subjects with autism/AS made errors and were significantly impaired on this task compared to the control group.
Conclusions
Adults with autism/AS were impaired on theory of mind test despite having normal intelligence, therefore its concluded that a core deficit involved in autism is the lack of advanced theory of mind.
(conclusions)
Baron-Cohen justified the theory of mind explanation for the poor performance of the autism group in following ways:
-Poor performance of this group could not have been due to low intelligence as these ps were in normal IQ range suggesting theory of mind is independent of general intelligence.
-Neither could it be due to development neuropsychiatric disability, since the ps with Tourette’s were not impaired on this task.
-The researchers claim the eyes task was a valid measure of ToM as;
~The target words are mental state terms.
~The target words are not just emotional states but include terms describing cognitive mental states, suggesting this task is not just an emotional perception task.
