Baron Cohen

Question 1

What is the aim to baron cohen?

Answer 1

To investigate if adults with high functioning autism or aspergers syndrome would be impaired on the theory of mind test called reading the mind in the eyes test. Would females be better than males?

Question 2

Baron cohen participants?

Answer 2

Group1: 16 participants, 12 with aspergers and 4 with autism
Group 2: 50 ps. 25m and 25f. Normal adults from cambridge.
Group 3: 10 tourettes patients, 8m and 2f

Question 3

Baron cohen research method?

Answer 3

Laboratory experiment

Question 4

Baron cohen procedure?

Answer 4

Each participant tested in a quiet room in a laboratory at cambridge uni. All participants did 4 tasks and they were randomised to control order effects.
The eyes task: ps had to look at 25 photos of eyes and predict what emotion they were feeling from a list.
Happws strange stories task: used to validate the eyes task. Ps had to try and understand the mental state of characters in a made up story. Test if ps could understand other peoples point of view.
Gender recognition task: same sets of eyes, m or f?

Question 5

Baron cohen results?

Answer 5

Normal and tourettes ps performed identically. Normal females performed better but normal males still perfromed better than aspergers/autism patients.
Tourettes patients performed well on the strange stories task but the autism/ aspergers were very impaired.

Question 6

Baron cohen conclusion?

Answer 6

Core deficit involved in autism is the lack of an advanced theory of mind

Question 7

What approach is baron cohen in?

Answer 7

Cognitive