Baron-Cohen (1997)

Question 0

What was the ‘new test’ for adults called? And what did it involve?

Answer 0

The eyes task

Involved reading emotions from photographs of eyes

Question 1

What was the aim of the study?

Answer 1

To test whether high functioning adults with autism and Asperger syndrome would struggle with a new and more difficult test for theory of mind

Question 2

What were the two control groups?

Answer 2

“Normal” people - 50 (25men and 25women)

Tourette’s syndrome group - 10 (8men and 2women)

Question 3

What was the experimental group?

Answer 3

Autism group - 16 (13men and 3women)

Question 4

How was the autism group selected?

Answer 4

They were a volunteer sample, recruited through their doctors and in response to an advert in the national Austin society’s magazine

Question 5

Why was the Tourette’s group used in the study?

Answer 5

Tourette’s has several key elements in common with autism
If theory of mind is a a problem with autism only, as opposed to being the result of a psychological condition, the autism group would be expected to do worse on the eyes task

Question 6

Describe the procedure

Answer 6

25 black and white photographs of eyes - shown for three seconds. Participants were asked to choose between two mental states represented by the photos

Question 7

Where did the photographs of eyes come from?

Answer 7

Magazines, all were of the same region of the face

Question 8

What were the control tasks? And why were they done?

Answer 8

Gender identification: All participants were asked to name the gender of the eyes
To ensure that the autism group didn’t simply have a visual problem that meant they couldn’t process the photographs
Basic emotion task: all participants asked to identify the emotion in full face photos (happy sad angry afraid surprise disgust)

Question 9

What was the validation of the eyes task?

Answer 9

Happe’s strange stories - asking participants about the emotions and intentions of characters in unfamiliar stories

Question 10

Who did the validation of the eyes task? And why?

Answer 10

Participants in the autism and Tourette’s groups did this task
Important to check that the eyes task actually measured theory of mind as it was a new test.

Question 11

Name 5 of the pairs of words in the eyes task

Answer 11

Relaxed - worried
Calm - anxious
Sympathetic - unsympathetic 
Attraction - repulsion 
Concerned - unconcerned

Question 12

What were the mean scores for each group in the eyes task?

Answer 12

Autism - 16.3
Tourette’s - 20.4
“Normal” - 20.3

Question 13

Why was 16.3 not a good score?

Answer 13

Because there was a 50/50 chance of getting the answer right

Question 14

How do we know that the eyes task is a valid test for theory of mind?

Answer 14

Because the no one in the Tourette’s group was incorrect in any of their stance stories responses but the autism group struggled

Question 15

What are the two main conclusions?

Answer 15

1. High functioning adults with autism have a problem with their theory of mind (find it hard to read mental states)
   Theory of mind deficit is central to understanding autism
2. The eyes task is a valid test for theory of mind for adults

Question 16

What were the controls (eyes task)?

Answer 16

When generating the foil and target words the eyes photos were shown to a panel of 8 adults who did not know there was a right or wrong answer. There was a 100% agreement with the target word

Question 17

Did males or females perform better on the eyes task?

Answer 17

Mean for women: 21.8
Mean for men: 18.8
Females better than males at reading minds from eyes

Question 18

Example of a first order theory of mind task? Background

Answer 18

The Sally Ann test (for children) Sally places a ball in a basket and leaves the room. Ann moves the ball from the basket to the box. Dally comes back, where does she look for the ball? Answer is basket but autistic children will get this wrong

Question 19

What type of experiment was this?

Answer 19

Laboratory, quasi experiment