Baron-Cohen Flashcards
outline the background to Baron-Cohen’s research l
previous Theory of mind tests were too simplistic for adults with high functioning autism.
for example the Sally Anne test- sally puts her marble in a basket and walks away, anne moves the marble into a box, where does sally look for her marble?
children who struggle with theory of mind will say that sally will look in the box because they know it’s in the box- they find it difficult to understand that sally would look in the basket because that’s where she last saw it.
define theory of mind
the ability to understand your own and other people’s beliefs, desires, intentions and emotions
what were the two aims of Baron-Cohens research
to find out why adults with high functioning autism have problems with social relationships
to develop an advanced test for theory of mind in adults with HF autism
what was the method of the study
Quasi experiment with an independent measures design
(Quasi because the IVs were naturally occurring i.e the participants already had autism/ tourette’s/ neither and this wasn’t directly manipulated for the purpose of the study)
who were the participants of Baron-Cohen’s study?
there were 3 groups of participants:
16 adults with high functioning autism (13m/3f)
50 normal (25m/25f)
10 tourette’s patients (8m/2f)
How was the autistic group sampled?
the autistic group were obtained by volunteer sampling through adverts in the National Autistic society magazine and through clinics
how was the normal group sampled
the normal group was obtained through random sampling from the general population of cambridge
participants had no history of psychiatric disorder
how was the tourette’s group obtained?
the tourette’s group was obtained by volunteer sampling and were recruited from a tertiary referral centre in london
what were the groups roughly matched on
the groups were roughly matched on age and intelligence
(they were all of ‘normal’ intelligence)
why was a control group with tourette’s used as well as the normal group
the tourette’s group was used as a control to make sure that lacking theory of mind was a result of autism and that it doesn’t occur with every neurological disorder
describe the main eyes task
participants were shown 25 black and white pictures of eyes for 3 seconds each. The photos were 10x15cm in size and participants were given two different emotion words to choose from, one was the target which was the correct emotion shown by the eyes, the other was the foil- this was the incorrect one.
participants were all tested individually either in a lab or at home on a pre programmed laptop.
All pictures were taken from magazines and we scan be sure of the correct answer as
4 judges generated the target words
explain the control task using Ekmans universal emotions, why this was done and what was found
explain: autistic participants had to identify the basic emotion of a full face. Emotions used were Ekmans 6 universal emotions (happy, sad, scared, disgust, angry, shocked)
why it was used: to ensure the participants were suitable for taking the more advanced ToM test with more complex emotions
Finding: they all correctly identified all 6 emotions so are suitable for the advanced test
Explain the control task using gender of the eyes, why this was done and what was found
Explanation: using the same eyes as in the main task participants had to select if the eyes were ‘male’ or ‘female’
why it was used: to ensure there were no visual processing issues which were impacting results
finding: they were all bale to correctly identify the gender of the eyes with accuracy, so issues with identifying emotion of the eyes cannot be due to visual processing issues
what is concurrent validity and how did Baron-Cohen check the concurrent validity of his new eye test
concurrent validity is 2 or more measures (of the same thing) that are showing the same results, would suggest that results are accurate
to test concurrent validity, Baron-Cohen got participants to complete Happe’s strange stories- we would expect that participants should perform similarly on the new test to HSS, which they did, so BCs new test does have concurrent validity
describe the results of the eye test for all groups
autistic adults were less likely to identify the target than the normal or tourette’s group:
the mean score for the autistic group was 16.3/25, it was 20.3/25 for the normal group and 20.4/25 for the tourette’s
